Innovation is big business but it is a difficult business and it is complex because it has many moving parts.
Innovation cannot be legislated. It’s not an activity that can be time-accelerated. Throwing money at it above and beyond setting up an infrastructure that allows innovation to take place and encourages it, is not something small organizations can afford to do, and the outcome of innovation is not typically predictable.
“Innovation requires an understanding of a current state of affairs, a desire and motivation to move away from that state of affairs, ideas for change, a selection process, resources to carry out the change (people, funding, technology), a planning/scheduling/monitoring and control framework for the change management project plus advance and ongoing communication so that staff get on board and stay on board” (kwkeirstead)
As with any complex undertaking, the starting position is no single approach or technique is likely to work.
In the above, it is my view that “ideas for change” and “selection process” are the most difficult and my vote for approaches and techniques for taking on these phases of innovation is:
– “ideas for change” – a knowledgebase environment that is capable of consolidating individual and collaborative initiatives and viewing of data in multiple ways ( “slice and dice”)
– “selection process” – figure of merit matrices (to accommodate comparisons of “apples” to “oranges”)
Watch for an elaboration on these two phases in future posts.
KWKeirstead's Blog 