Now that 2012 has kicked into gear, it is time to get your innovation efforts right before the recovery. To that end, every organization should be looking to find and aim their innovation catapult.
What does this mean, exactly? Well, we all know that innovation is about challenging the status quo. Because of this, there are many barriers to innovation that exist within organizations that try to prevent innovators from storming the castle gates and disrupting what is safe, comfortable, and successful. So what is an innovator to do?
To successfully catapult your innovation efforts over your organization’s defenses, you must first develop flexibility, focus, and passion in your approach to innovation. You must fight to balance several tensions within your organization including: exploitation versus exploration, and the entrepreneurial mindset versus the executive mindset. To help with these efforts, you must also consciously establish a focus on creating innovation excellence much in the same way that you pursue operational excellence.
To effectively find and aim your innovation catapult, you must first remember six key things about catapults themselves…
[Excerpt, click on the link to read the rest of this post.]
From: BradenKelley.com — Time to Find Your Innovation Catapult
By Braden Kelley
Braden Kelley is one of the contributing authors to the Amazon best-selling business book, A Guide to Open Innovation and Crowd Sourcing: Advice from Leading Experts, editedby Paul Sloane, with a foreword by Henry Chesbrough (Kogan Page, 2011). Cathryn Hrudicka, Founder, CEO and Chief Imagination Officer of Creative Sage™, is also one of the contributing authors. You can order it here: http://amzn.to/OI_CS
Cathryn Hrudicka co-wrote the chapter, “Building the Culture for Open Innovation and Crowd Sourcing,” with Gwen Ishmael and Boris Pluskowski — more information about all of the co-authors and the contents of this book is available at: http://bit.ly/OI_CS_Google
At Creative Sage™, we can help you maximize the value of your open innovation and/or crowdsourcing projects and gain the insights you need to move forward most effectively. To discuss your organization’s situation, please feel free to give us a call, at 1-510-845-5510 (Pacific time, in the San Francisco Bay Area/Silicon Valley). You can also contact us by email and visit our web site for more information. We look forward to working with you and helping you get real results.
We often coach and mentor clients in the area of organizational change management, making transitions, and facilitating collaboration abilities. We guide and mentor work teams, executives and managers in more effectively implementing transition processes, and in helping employees become more resilient in adjusting to rapid changes in the workplace. We work with on-site and virtual teams. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you would like to discuss your situation and how we can help your organization move forward to a more innovative and profitable future. You can also call us at 1-510-845-5510. Let’s talk and explore how we could work together to move your team forward on the road to continuous innovation!



