The Vital Attributes for an Innovation Organization

IFD Innovation Hand

Understanding what is needed for innovation- unlocking the mysteries

* Innovation organizations tend to be more decentralized, more informal, minimally stratified or layered and more generalist than specialized.

* They have cultures that value independent thinking, risk taking and ongoing learning.

* They are tolerant of failure and they value diversity.

* Open communication is reinforced and there is a high degree of trust and respect between individuals that collaborate.

These  attributes should include, but not limited too:

  • Organizations have a clear vision
  • Innovative organizations change because they see a better way and not because they have to change
  • Innovation organizations are always on the lookout for new products, new markets and new ways of doing things
  • Innovation organizations value substance over form- putting the ideas to work
  • They build creatively and innovation into the fabric of the company
  • They have organizational structures that are more often team-based than hierarchical
  • Innovation organizations tend to operate through open communications rather than through formal processes
  • Innovation organisations do not personalize conflict
  • Innovation organizations focus on who you know as well as on what you know
  • Innovation organizations appreciate individuality and diversity
  • Innovation organizations encourage fun at work- engaged, enlivened, fully participative and empowered
  • They reward curiosity and working smarter
  • Innovation organizations do not believe in the answer and allows space for wondering, thinking and reflection and numerous ways to get to a solution
  • Innovation organizations encourage people to bend the rules, being different and having pride if they emerge with adding new value to the organization.
  • Innovation organizations tolerate errors and avoid punishment where creativity is appreciated
  • Innovation organizations finally encourage behaviours that allow for thought, time for incubation, openness to wonder and sometimes irreverence that can elicit different, creative reasoning that wants to be measured on creativity and innovativeness.

Adapting fitness landscapes with your innovation objectives

IFD Journey Begins

There are a number of aspects we can look at initially.

This is helping us to shape the journey, to place it in context. It lays out the theory to the journey we are about to undertake.

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Our Challenge is the need to build diverse innovation capability

IFD Diversity

Knowing what are the critical factors and there dependences for sustaining innovation success is vital to understand so an organization can place the appropriate resources behind them. The question is, which are critical, which naturally occur when others begin to be put into place, which seem to have limited or no real effect on changing the dynamics of innovation?

Knowing these and having these clearer shown as a ‘return on impact/investment’ (ROII) has real business value. Today, we lack a clear system model that brings the critical innovation factors out and gives them their appropriate values, and then can equally provide the ability to model different future states and conceive future scenarios through different impact-investments.

So what are the challenges of the knowledge-driven economy that innovation needs to drive?

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Moving Up the Path Towards Innovation Fitness

So how do we become innovation fit?

IFD Mountain View

Can you imagine standing on top of a mountain, looking out across a vast expanse of nothing but mountains and valleys stretching out before you. If you squint hard enough you can just make out that somewhere in the hazy distance, the end point of your travels, towards that much needed innovation understanding, made up of many different dynamics that make you and your organization that much fitter to compete in today’s challenging world.

Clearly while you are on top of this mountain you feel exhilarated to have even got up to this point. To even get to this point you have already made a decision that you and your organization would become an innovation one and needs to look beyond what you have to what is possible.

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