Figure 1: Key Ingredients to Successful Innovation
Leadership (@SHM Consulting, 2017)
There are three key ingredients to have successful
innovation leadership: strong support
from senior management, high number of ideas from employees and a strong
innovation process in place. If any of
these are missing, then the full impact of any item present is not realized.
Looking at the Venn diagram above, the ideal position an
organization can be in is the area marked 4.
This indicates that all three key ingredients are present. The other
numbered areas (1, 2, 3) indicate that two of the key ingredients are present. These three areas lead to less than optimum
results, as follows:
Area
1 – Spinning your wheels
In this case, there are lots of good ideas, and senior
management has shown strong support to move these ideas forward. Without a strong innovation process in place,
though, the ideas will never be turned into new products or services.
Area
2 – Empty funnel
Senior management are looking for ideas and there’s a
good process to turn them into new products or services. But having no ideas is like a car engine with
no gas. It should be pointed out that
staff members never have a lack of ideas.
Rather, they are hesitant to bring ideas forward, or the idea collection
system is not storing the ideas properly.
Area
3 – Wasted energy
In this scenario, there are lots of good ideas, and there’s
a strong process in place to turn them into new products and services. But with no senior management support in
place, efforts to transform the ideas in to new products and services will go
nowhere.
Where is your organization?
Where would you like it to be?
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