The whiplash journey of Mattel’s beloved kids’ toy range perfectly sums up the fundamentals and key challenges of managing continuous, successful corporate innovation.
Although innovation programs are becoming more and more embedded within the enterprise, it is still very common to find organizations that are just starting to experiment with formal, continuous innovation programs. Many IdeaScale clients that come to us are quietly launching pilot programs as proof-of-concept initiatives that will confirm innovation value for senior leadership.
Innovation leaders today don’t have an easy job. Tasked with bringing Innovation to their organization, they often face a variety of interpretations of innovation throughout the organization, a lack of comprehensive understanding of what innovation really entails, and what it requires to truly embed innovation in a way that it sustains itself.
When it comes to fostering continuous innovation, most organizational cultures stink at it. Industry research provides some interesting statistics which highlight that innovation is not easily obtainable and that companies are not innovating fast enough to repel the unrelenting threat posed by new market entrants with declining barriers to entry.
Trust is fundamental to the highest levels of collaboration, but how do you know if that level of trust exists?
Continuous innovation stream comes from controlled chaos. According to Jim Clemmer, it's a tricky process that has four main stages.
New products and services can be "knocked off" or copied. But it's much harder for competitors to duplicate a management system and corporate culture that produces a continuous stream of successful product and service improvements, innovations, adaptations and extensions. That continuous innovation stream comes from controlled chaos, which can be achieved through a four-stage process, according to Jim Clemmer.
