Sustaining a reliable innovation capability requires attention to a range of organizational elements.
Each entry in this blog series provides a quick tip for improving your organization’s climate for innovation. See the full series here.
Challenge: Organizational culture can be hard to change when it is comprised of the same people always behaving in the same ways.
Quick Tip: Look for innovation competence in every new hire.
Challenge: Innovation initiatives can come across as “something completely different” (to borrow a phrase from innovative comedy troupe Monty Python), which leaves people feeling like they don’t know what to do.
Quick Tip: Leverage past successes—big, historical successes as well as more recent accomplishments—to convey that innovation is an extension of things that are already occurring.
Open any business publication to the article on innovation and you are likely to learn about the glitzy “front end of innovation” – idea generation, crowd sourcing, and problem solving. While these practices continue to capture interest, sustaining a reliable innovation capability requires attention to a range of more mundane organizational elements: leadership, culture, communication, process, structure, roles, skills, incentives, commercialization, etc.
Although these topics can be ponderous, there are plenty of good approaches that can be adopted quickly. Each entry in this blog series provides a quick tip for improving your organization’s climate for innovation.
Challenge: Innovation requires risk, but this term has been confused with “failure”, one of the most toxic words in all of business.
Quick Tip: To communicate effectively about innovation, you need to choose terminology that carries the meaning you intend to convey.
Words like “failure”, “risk”, and “learning” are often loaded terms for executives who deal with innovation. Here are some ideas to help you get your messaging right.
Open any business publication to the article on innovation and you are likely to learn about the glitzy “front end of innovation”— idea generation, crowd sourcing, and problem solving. While these practices continue to capture interest, sustaining a reliable innovation capability requires attention to a range of more mundane organizational elements: leadership, culture, communication, process, structure, roles, skills, incentives, commercialization, etc.
Although these topics can be ponderous, there are plenty of good approaches that can be adopted quickly. Each entry in this blog series provides a quick tip for improving the organizational climate for innovation.
Challenge: Innovation teams working in isolation often fall off the radar, making them more susceptible to interference and reduced motivation.
Quick Tip: Launch innovation projects in a focused and organized team-based competition.
Open any business publication to the article on innovation and you are likely to learn about the glitzy “front end of innovation” – idea generation, crowd sourcing, and problem solving. While these practices continue to capture interest, sustaining a reliable innovation capability requires attention to a range of more mundane organizational elements: leadership, culture, communication, process, structure, roles, skills, incentives, commercialization, etc.
Although these topics can be ponderous, there are plenty of good approaches that can be adopted quickly. Each entry in this blog series provides a quick tip for improving the organizational climate for innovation.
Challenge: Innovation projects can lose momentum when teams hand over their recommendations to others for approval and action.
Quick Tip: For innovation project teams to succeed, they must pilot their own solutions under the watchful eye of an executive sponsor.
Open any business publication to the article on innovation and you are likely to learn about the glitzy “front end of innovation” – idea generation, crowdsourcing, and problem-solving. While these practices continue to capture interest, sustaining a reliable innovation capability requires attention to a range of more mundane organizational elements: leadership, culture, communication, process, structure, roles, skills, incentives, commercialization, etc.
Although these topics can be ponderous, there are plenty of good approaches that can be adopted quickly. Each entry in this blog series will provide a quick tip for improving the organizational climate for innovation.
Challenge: To prevent innovation from being perceived as a “flavor of the month” program, top executives must sustain an active communication campaign around innovation.
Quick Tip: Have the CEO “tweet” about innovation.
Image: adrianclarkmbbs via flickr
Guest post by Rebecca Horton, a graduate student studying Design Management at the Savannah College of Art and Design who has joined the Motiv team for the summer
It’s a rare occasion that a trip to the doctor’s office or the subsequent visit to the pharmacy is a pleasant experience, but last week I had not one but two “wow” moments in the realm of personal healthcare.
As a design strategist with a particular bent towards service design, I’m constantly analyzing the elements that make service experiences delightful, frustrating, or downright awful. By nature of my role as a designer, I’m more often than not critical of services for failing to deliver on expectations or overlooking user needs. So, when I have a great service experience, I take note and I tell others. Documented below are a few snippets from my latest “delights” in the healthcare arena.
The first of my two healthcare “wows” came during a visit to my neighborhood urgent care center. Upon entering the clinic, I was immediately greeted by a woman at the front desk. Nothing too out of the ordinary there, but when she asked me to fill out my information she handed me a mini laptop instead of a clipboard littered with forms. Already a bit perplexed, I sat down to fill in my information. The click-through set of forms was well designed and easy to use. Apparently developed so that customers could fill out forms before even entering the clinic for an appointment, the interface prompted me to fill in missing information when I left things blank and allowed me to easily navigate between different sections. Thanks to this handy tool, in only a few minutes my information was logged and I was back at the counter chatting about next steps. From there, I signed a few waivers using a digital pen pad as the receptionist read aloud the necessary information. With the news humming on low through a television monitor above my head, I settled into a chair in the sunlit lobby to wait to be called back. Continue Reading»
Guest Post By Katie Waterson, Director of Strategy & Innovation, NCB Capital Impact
Innovative Partnerships address Social Challenges
It’s a fascinating time to be an innovator focused on solving domestic social problems. The challenges at the center of social innovation in the United States – improving the lives of people in low income communities through better education, high-quality healthcare, access to healthy food, affordable housing and jobs – are complex, dynamic and interconnected through an historic and often problematic set of systems, policies and funding models.
Yet it’s the complexity of these challenges that is giving way to a growing “impact investing” ecosystem comprised of venture philanthropists, micro-lenders and mission investors looking for triple bottom line returns on capital, which has been fueling new ways of approaching innovation for the social good. These models bring together thought leaders and funds from both public and private sources to create social investment opportunities with impacts far beyond what government agencies and private companies alone have achieved. It’s the success of organizations like my firm, NCB Capital Impact, KIVA, Heifer International, Grameen Bank, Acumen Fund and many others that keep me optimistic about the outlook for the United States; we can and will innovate our way out of the problems we’re facing. Keep Reading»
Founder and president of Motiv and a nationally recognized thought leader on innovation management and design strategy.
is an engagement director, who has overall management responsibility for the various work streams involved in our consulting work.
is a co-founding consultant at Motiv, and drives the business and analytical thinking on projects.
spearheads business development and marketing efforts as well as support for client engagements.
