Sure-Thing-Taking

Posted by Elaine Boden
06/27 @ 02:16 AM

That is what IGENDER CEDISMI needed to hear today, I am fighting to success through the maze of curiosity.

Posted by Raghu Venugopal
06/11 @ 10:08 AM

Innovation is the only way to navigate rapid economic business and techno changes in this ERA of limited capital & time. successful innovation is vital to sustain and growth. A managed & systematic approach drive predictable results and ensure the team to be equipped to respond and adapt to external changes.

Posted by Josef Martens
06/08 @ 10:27 PM

Innovation is much more than coming up with ideas or taking the risk. Oftentimes when you look at successful companies, we think it was the one brilliant idea that catapulted them to success. The reality is that innovation - like many other things in business - is about having a robust process.

This may sound boring, because a process is not exciting. But the good news is that by building a process around innovation, you make it repeatable and predictable. The innovation process needs to be built so that it creates, captures and commercializes ideas, and all of this needs to happen in the context of the organizational culture.

Some people think, you cannot plan for a brilliant idea or for scientific breakthrough. While this may be true for real scientific breakthrough, it is not true for innovation: you can plan for it, and you can grow the right culture to make it happen. Do you really think innovation at Apple is coincidence or outside a tight process?

You need to design an innovation process that works for your organization, and then constantly monitor the value of your innovation pipeline.

Josef Martens
www.innovationkeynote.com

Posted by Bill Leinweber
06/08 @ 03:30 PM

Often times, employees have buckets of ideas about how to improve things but the proper culture has not been created to bring those ideas forward without fear and embarrassment. The key is to create that culture from the top down and to encourage and welcome all ideas. I heard a great suggestion today at an industry roundtable to allocate an "innovation room" - a conference type room devoted to ideas where employees pop into the room when the inspiration moves them, post a particular problem they're trying to solve and then other employees can come by and post ideas, solutions, suggestions.

Posted by Bill Willahan
06/08 @ 01:25 PM

At the risk of being inappropriate and I hope you will forgive me if I am, I would like to offer a solution to many of the concerns that we have been discussing. I have developed this solution over the last two decades and have had success in very sophisticated environments. We have published a book that addresses many of these issues and provides an environment where innovation can thrive. It is in the promotions section on Linkedin for the Execunet group at a discount.
Again this comment is only presented in the hope of helping solve this issue and to improve all of our operations.
Thanks
Bill

Posted by Brian Weiner
06/08 @ 11:52 AM

Freedom comes from being at ease with the certainty of uncertainty.

Posted by Renee LEwis
06/08 @ 10:31 AM

Time. It's the one thing I can't get back and it's hard to see the future you haven't invented yet. Admittedly important, not quite as tangible.

Posted by Etienne Maricq
06/08 @ 05:52 AM

Today "Innovation" has been somewhat hyped as we see numerous engineering and r&d;departments re-branded "innovation". Of course companies with an innovating engineering or R&D;group will gain a differential advantage.

What I see as true innovation is the creation of a new bundle of functionalities that have a useful end-user benefits.

So what prevents us? I've seen the fear of failure, or stepping out of the comfort of established procedures being one of the chief obstacle. Admonition to "step out of the box" is rarely of great help, especially when the admonisher does not or cannot even define "the box"...

Posted by Elaine Boden
06/08 @ 02:37 AM

The word Entrentrepenure means the creator of something from nothing, and if you are doing that and creating you are not failing as you started with nothing and so that is the only place you will go back to.

Fear, no fear is needed, but fear of fear is.

Failure is a learning vehicle no more than that.

It is failure that makes us a success, not success, if you are scared of failure, then you are not the make up of the entrepreneur. You have to embrace failure, the ride, the success, the journey, as it is the journey that is the dream not the destination.

Entrepreneur is crated and born.

Innovation is creating something from nothing that has not yet been created, or improved on, or done in a better way, or more productive way.

This is what entrepreneur is.

Go on give it a go, but be careful as most entrepreneurs fail many times, lose many things until through pure determination, find success.

Unless you was born into a sure thing family.

Good Luck

Elaine
eboden.org

Posted by Ravin Sanjith
06/08 @ 01:55 AM

There is no shortage of good ideas. The real Innovation lies in IMPLEMENTATION - not in the 'project management' sense, but in the ability to navigate the path of least resistance within a certain operating culture.

Posted by Brian Weiner
06/08 @ 01:44 AM

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world;
The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.
Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

George Bernard Shaw


The Illusion Factory attempts the impossible daily and achieves it. We can only accomplish that if every person in the company was not insatiably curious. Great article!

Brian Weiner
CEO
The Illusion Factory

Posted by santosh
06/08 @ 01:02 AM

Your take certainly kills the phrase "curiosity killed the cat"!!! And rightly so!!!

More than fear and embarassement, it is the upbringing that strangles the innocent curious attitude of an individual. Many societies hard-wire their children to rote and follow instructions. This is the first step to 'hanging the cat'.

Let the children grow up asking questions, challenging norms, and looking for alternative solutions. As adults, we should not bury the child in us. Let it surface and play. Probably we can all re-ingite the curiosity in real issues.

Posted by yanda
06/08 @ 12:34 AM

Two things that force us to keep innovative : Passion and Vision

Posted by David Keselman
06/08 @ 12:19 AM

I could not agree with this statement more, in fact have experienced it myself. I have come to the conclusion that innovation is desired but feared from and that although many employers ask for it, they really do not want it and seem to fall back on tried and tested (but not always true). In these times of constant change when we are so desperately looking to improve and change innovation is the only way, but many are still hoping to achieve different outcomes with the same players...

Posted by ursula mannix
06/07 @ 09:03 PM

Hindrance to innovation "societal group think."

Posted by ursula mannix
06/07 @ 08:59 PM

Love the creative angle.

Posted by Jim Pasquale
06/07 @ 07:23 PM

Very easy answer here. Innovators understand what we need before we do, not what we want. There is a big difference between them. They are also very good at surrounding themselves with good people who can execute on a vision. And a Great Innovator does it over and over again irrespective of the failures.

Posted by Greg Alder
06/07 @ 06:15 PM

Anthony, an interesting thread. Innovation is the result of creative thinking. Unfortunately, most of us have lost the ability to think creatively. School beats it out of us (refer to Sir Ken Robinson). Experience finishes the job. We cannot think creatively because we have developed expertise. Expertise usually means we have developed speed through repetition. Expertise is a habit. We know the best and quickest way to get to the office, and so we take that route every day, almost on autopilot. At work, we have learnt to recognise common problems or opportunities and so we automatically reach for the solutions that have worked in similar circumstances in the past. If we are invited to participate in a brainstorming session, we search through our accumulated professional knowledge for new ideas - and all we come up with are the tried and tested old ideas. As you identify, creative thinking is the bringing together of two seemingly unrelated facts or items. We won't find those two unrelated ideas in the same part of our brain where we file our professional knowledge. We need help. We need tools that make the process of thinking creatively one that can be performed on demand and applied to solve ANY problem or reveal ANY opportunity. This way, the next engineering innovation might come from an idea born out of analysing Adolph Hitler or a paper clip or a fig. So, in order to innovate, we must first unlearn professional knowledge and then learn to think creatively. Once learnt, creative thinking will become a daily habit.

Posted by Mike Hudson
06/07 @ 05:56 PM

The one thing that keeps us from innovating? Fear.

Posted by Diane Morris
06/07 @ 05:09 PM

First, thank you to everyone for sharing your thoughts and comments. I found all are worthwhile to read and remember. Second, I've learned from personal experience that when I was asked to do something I'd never done before (improve the morale in this group, make then a team; improve our delivery; find a way to increase our sales, etc.), I never stopped to question whether I could achieve the desired goal. Instead, I anlyzed the situation and searched for a logical approach and maybe most importantly, I approached the mission with the innocence of a child. I never thought for a second that I couldn't come up with the solution, I just set about finding the solution. Now I sometimes have to stop to recall my early successes and that child-like innocence with which I approached my solutions (we can become so jaded over time). I believe that's what innovation is - jumping in knowing you're going to come up with a solution. Now, with much more experience under my belt, I have more resources from which to draw, but remembering the innocence with which I approached my missions (not stopping long enough to even think, "Is this something I can achieve?") keeps the innovative ideas and solutions bubbling up.

Posted by Tim
06/07 @ 01:12 PM

Thank you for the inspirational moment. As a career risk taker and occassional visionary with over 40+ years with the government, I sometimes need assurance from others that people like me, not unenlightened bosses, hold the answers to life's problems.

Posted by Bill Willahan
06/07 @ 11:55 AM

Innovation is critical to the success of all companies and organizations in our new economy. In organizations today personnel look constantly for new ways of producing products, building stronger relationships with customers and improving interactions with vendors. It is this resource (innovative expertise) that is closest to the customer, vendors and daily operations that will make the greatest and most effective changes.

In the old economy the workforce was stubborn and unwilling to adapt to new ideas and concepts. In today and future environments the workforce is more educated, communication is much more open and improvement is the name of the game. The workforce is eager to adapt and also drive innovations that improve their operations. When you couple this innovative expertise with advancing technologies you have a streamlined organization that is very difficult to compete with.

In this environment innovation is a constant. New ideas, concepts and technologies are implemented rapidly that achieve objectives that drive sales and the bottom line. It is this environment that I believe we are all striving for.

Posted by Mark Boundy
06/07 @ 11:36 AM

Anthony, much of what you say in this article is similar to my own conclusions. Companies build processes which make them good at what they do; work is consistent, repeatable, trackable, and more easily managed. What few managers remember, however, is that any process which makes you good at something makes you bad at something else (think of how well a dedicated powerlifter would do in a marathon race). Once you've fine-tuned your organization to do the same thing over and over REALLY well, how good is it at doing something different? Creating something discontinuous? Innovating? Rather, do you think that in a thousand subtle ways, you've engineered a purpose-built "antipreneurial" culture without ever meaning to?

HR departments and stockholders force organizations to engage in executive succession planning. New products and innovation should be considered succession planning in its own right, with a purposeful plan and its own discipline.

Posted by Dr. Janice Presser
06/07 @ 10:53 AM

Innovation means inventing a whole new way to do something. The greatest deterrent to that is fear. If you can put a team together where fear doesn't cloud the atmosphere, you have a chance of being innovative.

Unfortunately, that lets out a lot of organizations...

Posted by Jim Thurman
06/07 @ 10:45 AM

Unfortunately, the command-and-control mindset and environment in most large organizations tends to discourage curiosity and individual thinking to a certain degree. While they may claim to welcome innovation, their actions often speak otherwise.