Heads-Up! on Organizational Innovation

Work Trends: Workers Want Chance to Volunteer

David Batston at the Wag states:  A new survey in the United Kingdom has revealed that the vast majority (92%) of British workers would prefer to work for a company that enables volunteering. The study, from the employer perspective, found that benefits linked with employee volunteering include higher workplace morale, less absenteeism, and increased worker productivity. [more ...]

New Mindmapping Study

InnovationTools just released the results of a survey of 500+ users of mind mapping software.  This is a fascinating study whether you're an avid mindmapper or still thinking about trying it. Here's a brief summary of the results, along with an attached copy of the full report:

• Mind mapping software increases the productivity of business users by 20 percent
• Top applications of mind mapping software as project management, preparing presentations, note taking and problem solving.
• Sharing mind maps with non-visually oriented colleagues and coworkers can be challenging
• Why is it often hard to expand the use of mind mapping software beyond a few "islands" of users? This survey identified possible causes.

To obtain your free copy of the survey results, click here.

In case you'd like to know a little bit more about how to do mindmapping, you can take the short course (about 5-minutes) Mindmapping in 8 Easy Steps.  The range of uses for this technique is incredible ... from project management to personal journaling ... anytime you're dealing with information, problems, ideas, projects or people, you can use mindmapping to help people grasp complex information, recognize patterns and relationships and uncover hidden nuances.

Special thanks to Chuck Frey for advancing the understanding of this powerful technique.

MBA Programs Short on Innovation

A study cited by Ascribe reports that “only about half of the MBA programs teach some type of elementary creativity and innovation module or course, and only one-third of these business schools have freestanding courses.”  Primary reasons given are lack of trained faculty and limited curriculum time. 

Gary Selden, Ph.D., co-director of the Creativity & Innovation Project at the Coles College of Business at Kennesaw State University which performed the study states, "There is a preponderance of popular and scholarly literature supporting the notion that creative thinking and innovation are becoming the new core competency for corporate growth, and that a company's greatest asset may be its creative capital.  Our survey shows that business schools have not kept up with this trend.”

If innovation and creativity are the new core competency, why aren't business schools making time for it in their "limited curriculum time?"

Sounds like an opportunity for all of you who are teaching these courses within your organizations to talk to your local business schools.

It's the PROCESS!

A new Booz, Allen Hamilton study reported on by Strategy+Business comes to the conclusion that innovation takes more than money.  (Sometimes you wonder how much money gets spent finding these gems.)  You can read more at the link above, but here's the part I love:

It’s the process, not the pocketbook. Superior results, in most cases, seem to be a function of the quality of an organization’s innovation process — the bets it makes and how it pursues them — rather than the magnitude of its innovation spending.

It amazes me how many organizations are still practicing "random innovation."  Innovation is this wonderful world where nothing is every "either/or" ... it's always "both/and."  It's a little crazy making but it helps to remember that innovation is science *and* art; random *and* planned, process *and* results, out-of-the-box *and* in-the-box ... and so on.

Open Source Marketing Manifesto

Check out James Cherkoff's Open Source Marketing manifesto.  You've probably heard the term and wondered what marketing has to do with Linux. Turns out, everything. Read James' manifesto to find out where marketers go next.

InnovateAmerica Final Report Recommendations

Specific recommendations from this final report from the Council on Competitiveness will be pretty familiar to those of you who have been thinking about innovation for awhile, but it’s nice to see our thoughts confirmed by such an august body.  They divide their recommendations into three categories:  Talent – Investment – Infrastructure.

Talent – the human dimension of innovation, including knowledge creation, education, training and workforce support.  Recommendations include supporting a culture of collaboration, a symbiotic relationship between research and commercialization, and life-long skill development.

Investment – the financial dimension of innovation, including R&D investment; support for risk-taking and entrepreneurship; and encouragement of long-term innovation strategies.  Recommendations seek to give innovators the resources and incentives to succeed.

Infrastructure – the physical and policy structures that support innovators, including networks for information, transportation, healthcare and energy; intellectual property protection, business regulation; and structures for collaboration among innovation stakeholders. Recommendations support a new industry-academia alliance, an innovation infrastructure for the 21^st century, a flexible intellectual property regime, strategies to bolster the nation’s manufacturing enterprises and a national innovation leadership network.

More on this report in later posts.

Innovation: Single most important factor

It amazes me that there are still business leaders who don’t appreciate the importance of innovation … and even more who think that it will somehow happen automatically. If customer service or quality or financial savvy doesn’t happen automatically, why would innovation?

Perhaps we’ve taken a small step forward now that the InnovateAmerica final report from the Council on Competitiveness is out. It deserves to be read by anyone interested in innovation.

Here is the opening statement:

“Innovation will be the single most important factor in determining America’s success through the 21st century.” It continues by stating, “innovation-driven growth (is) a more urgent imperative than ever before.”

The report recognizes that we have focused on efficiency and quality for the past 25 years and now it is time to place the same level of focus and energy on innovation. In a rather interesting twist on the “Innovate or Die” theme, the report states, “Innovate or Abdicate.” In other words if you’re not leading innovation, you shouldn’t be leading.

The definition crafted by the group is:

"The intersection of invention and insight, leading to the creation of social and economic value."

While there are hundreds of definitions floating around, this is one of the best. It incorporated the concept of new understanding (insight) coming together with the urge to create something new (invention), all in the service of creating new value, in this case social and economic.

Innovation is not only a good business strategy ... and it's not only our patriotic duty (as emphasized in this report) ... but it is also our only hope for solving the immense challenges facing our world today.

More on this report in future posts.

Trust Survey Report

We recently completed a study on the link between innovation and trust.  This report is an example of the type of studies done periodically by InnovationNetwork and made available to IN members.

This report will be available here until January 31, 2005 as a special introduction to some of the benefits of membership.  This report is now only available to IN Members.

Click here for more information about IN Membership.

Innovation Spending Increases

News from Yahoo:  73% of Global Companies Will Increase Spending on Innovation in 2005 according to Boston Consulting Group study.