If you’re working in innovation there’s nothing as rewarding as making the long journey from inspiration to implementation.
The magical potency of positive thinking has been a common theme among motivational speakers for a long time. In 1952 Norman Vincent Peale published his seminal book, The Power of Positive Thinking. He advocated that you should always be optimistic. You should build a mental picture of yourself succeeding.
Underlying an innovative culture driven by an innovative leader is innovativeness. Innovativeness drives business growth by increasing innovation opportunities.
I’ve recently been advising a range of leaders in how to start successful innovation programs. A couple are relaunches of efforts that were abandoned in the past, and others are starting from scratch in organizations (and sectors) that are more comfortable with the status quo.
On your path towards success, your business will encounter numerous bumps, however, some of these problems tend to hold your business more than others. Most of the time, the entrepreneurs behind these SMBs are first-timers, which means that they lack the necessary experience to recognize the gravity of the situation in the given moment.
You may be the mastermind behind the business idea that has led to establishing your company, but your employees are the backbone of its success. No brand, no matter how necessary it may be, is immune to failure caused by poor internal structure and leadership.
Last month, leaders in public sector innovation gathered to discuss ways of crowdsourcing new solutions to longstanding problems at IdeaScale’s Open Nation DC. Speakers from a range of agencies as diverse as the FDA and the US Coast Guard presented best practices on creating actionable change in government.
Managing innovation is a big role that puts a lot of weight on the shoulders of management teams. Depending on how much a company cultivates an innovative culture and environment, innovative ideas either go through chains of command, or are workshopped in specific departments.
Conformity may be overrated. Most innovators really do "think different." Learn to spot them, and what they can teach us!
Innovation can’t happen without education and inspiration. Stagnation is the absence of creativity, and far too many teams aren’t using education as a way to keep the fresh and creative ideas flowing.
Many companies around America struggle with communication between the management, the employees, and every level for that matter. Unfortunately, bad communication can lead to lower production and even conflict within the company, squandering sales and hurting reputation.
Are your employees underperforming? This happens even to star employees when they don’t feel motivated to do their job anymore. Luckily, great managers can drive employee engagement by reconnecting with their workers. To boost engagement, you must find out what drives the people to do their best job every day.
Innovation is an integral part of many organizations today, and for good reason: it helps companies stay agile, relevant, and evolving. However, innovation is often difficult to achieve—or is even met with resistance.
The more you allow disparate ideas to mingle and collide, the more you maximize your chances for true innovative thought to emerge. Learn all of this and more in a complimentary white paper about why innovators want to nurture workforce diversity.
The legacy approach to talent selection involves matching education, length of experience and functional skills to the role. All of this makes sense as a baseline, and for well-established professions. But, we argue, selecting talent for innovation requires a whole new approach. Companies must recognize specific innovation skills that drive business outcomes. Yet today, most lack the tools to do so.
