Innovation iQ
How to improve your organisation's ability to innovate and prosper
The ability to innovate effectively is widely recognised as critical to long term business success.
The question is how to develop concrete plans that have widespread support within your business
and lead to a measurable long-term improvement in innovative capability.
There are two traps for the unwary. You might recognise one or other of them.
Trap #1 Shoot from the hip
Management jumps straight into detailed action planning after a very superficial analysis (or no
analysis at all) of areas of organisational innovation strengths and weaknesses . The result can often
be that key areas are overlooked and/or there is insufficient buy-in to the action plans.
Trap #2 Paralysis by analysis
A detailed analysis is done incorporating many diverse views and some fairly woolly discussions.
But there is no action at the end of it because the subject proves too difficult to get a handle on. No
clear shared conclusions on what needs to be done are reached.
What is needed is a comprehensive and engaging process with high quality analysis and wide
ownership, that quickly leads to focused action planning.
The Innovation iQ iPad app, although it costs very little, is full of innovation expertise and can
assist in such a process. This process can be applied to the whole organisation or to sub-units such
as individual functions, groups or subsidiaries.
The key issues it covers are:
Business Purpose
Without a clear business purpose and motivating stretching goals that require new ideas to achieve
them, innovation is unlikely to thrive.
Creative Capability
As well as creative people and space for them to create, an innovative organisation also needs an
external orientation to spark ideas that are of value to others, and good partnering skills to gain the
confidence and creative input from others.
Development Capability
This is a convergent capability (in contrast to the diversity of creativity) and requires different
skills and processes: the ability to make good decisions on which ideas to pursue and the ability to
champion and establish projects.
Implementation Capability
This requires good project management abilities, communications skills, and partnering skills.
Learning Capability
To increase the innovation capability of the organisation, the ability for the organisation to learn is
critical.
Click here for details of the Innovation iQ iPad app.
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