A New Dance

From BusinessWeek Online, August 1, 2005

This article, "Get Creative! How to Build Innovative Companies," calls innovation a "new conversation."  For those of us who have been working in this field for many years, it's definitely not new and it's more than a conversation.  However, this is a worthwhile article and here's a excerpt:

A New Dance
For managers, the biggest challenge may be making the leap from their Six Sigma process skills to new ways of thinking. For corporations, transforming themselves will require new sets of values and organizational principles. Have you heard of design strategy? It's probably the Next Big Thing after Six Sigma. How about consumer-centric innovation? It may be the most powerful way to raise a company's innovation success rate. Do you know what innovation metrics your company needs? Have you heard of CENCOR (calibrate, explore, create, organize, and realize)? It's the post-Six Sigma dogma GE is spreading far and wide among its managers. Are B-schools on top of all this change? Not really, but Stanford University is starting a "D-school" -- a design school where managers can learn the dynamics of innovation. Teaching elephants to dance is never easy, but that's the task ahead if you want your company -- and your career -- to prosper.

You're thinking "this is all hype," aren't you? Just another "newest and biggest" fad, right? Wrong. Ask the 940 senior executives from around the world who said in a recent Boston Consulting Group Inc. survey that increasing top-line revenues through innovation has become essential to success in their industry. The same BCG survey showed that more than half of the execs were dissatisfied with the financial returns on their investments in innovation. They should be. By one measure, from innovation consultant Doblin Inc., nearly 96% of all innovation attempts fail to beat targets for return on investment. No wonder innovation frustration is the talk of corner offices.

BusinessWeek is joining this growing conversation about getting creative by launching a new online Innovation & Design portal -- www.businessweek.com/innovate -- to present the best research and thinking on the subject. Take a look at the interactive self-assessment feature developed by Larry Keeley's Doblin Inc. There are six innovation metrics available. Keeley is the guru of the evolving field of innovation science. Some compare him to W. Edwards Deming, who revolutionized the field of quality measurement.