In the last couple of years there has been a flood of research reports on the importance of creativity and innovation published by professional associations, professional services organizations and multi-national corporations. These topics are clearly being taken seriously by organizations as they struggle at all levels to comprehend the impact of the dynamic changes in organizational and business paradigms that are being turned up side down by the emergence of truly global markets.
In this newsletter, the Creative Leadership Forum provides a quick summary of what it considers to be the more informed of these reports together with a synopsis of the emerging themes and their implications for leadership. For those interested, click on the report name and you will be able to download a complete copy of the individual report. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
A Quote in The Moment
….There are different levels of knowledge..(in business)… First comes raw material; facts information, data - ingredients of information clutterand overload - what we read in newspapers. Second is insight. Insight connotes seeing into a situation..that "Aha" moment.. Then we have ideas. Ideas are interconnected insights that we can run with. Finally we have knowledge as perceived value to a customer or other stakeholder… But it is creativity that enables the transformation of one form of knowledge to the next…
"Jamming - The Art and Discipline of Business Creativity"
John Kao
Academic Director, Managing Innovation Programme, Stanford University
Former Professor Harvard Business School
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International Reports
Was::Within Borders - Is: Across Borders - Will Be: Without Borders?
Price Waterhouse Cooper 10th Global CEO Survey.
Price Waterhouse Cooper's 68 page report concentrates on the impact of globalization by asking how global leaders are managing change. Their report reveals that whilst there is evidence of new business models for globalization emerging, they are the exception rather than the rule. Whilst financial capital is still one of the significant drivers in a global economy, the critical challenges lie in the abilities of business and government leaders to develop high levels of expertise in knowledge generation, managing people across cultures and the degree to which they can generate stakeholder collaboration to drive change and growth whilst mitigating risk.
This report offers a comprehensive overview of globalization in the beginning of 21st Century supported with some good in-depth interviews with CEO's who are leading emerging global operations.
The Smart Spenders - the Global Innovation 1000
Booz Allen Hamilton
Booz Allen Hamilton's study of the world's largest corporate R&D budgets uncovers a small group of high-leverage innovators who outperform their industries. The specific findings of the report - deep pockets can be dry wells; less than 10% of companies are high-leverage innovators; companies are getting better at squeezing benefits from R&D spending; bigger can be better even if it doesn't boost breakthroughs; patents generally don't drive profits and masters of the innovation value chain have an edge. Their research found 94 out of 1000 companies consistently outperformed their peers over 5 years while spending less on R&D as a percentage of sales than their industry median.
This report examines how these companies achieved these outcomes. It has a good section on the financing models for innovation as well as the business model.
Expanding the Innovation Horizon
IBM's Global Study 2006.
The overall intent of IBM's report was to capture CEO's current views on innovation. It found that over the next two years, most CEO's expected fundamental changes in their organizations. To effect these changes, the CEO's concurred that business model innovation was the prime consideration, external collaboration was indispensable and innovation requires orchestration from the top. For CEO's to address those notions properly, they needed to think broadly, act personally and manage the innovation mix; to make the business model deeply different; to ignite innovation through business and technology integration; to defy collaboration limits and to force an outside look every time.
This report develops its main themes well, has some good case studies and offers a good bibliography.
Executive Summary (only) on the US Corporate Training Market.
Simba Information, Stamford.
A short insightful report on the US corporate training market showing a heavy demand for soft skills training. The US corporate training market is calculated at $13.2 billion and the market is forecasting a compound annual growth of 20% until 2009. E-learning in the US is expected to grow 34.5% in 2007. These figures do not incorporate India and China where the demand for corporate management training is now starting to emerge strongly. Globally, the demand is being driven by the retirement of baby-boomers and the subsequent need to train a new generation of younger managers moving into senior level management positions.
Some interesting insights and trends on the importance of executive training programmes.
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A Quote in the Moment
Whilst reason and science help us to know and control our environment, they are not particularly well suited for helping us understand ourselves and one another….aesthetic experience forces (us) to confront (our) emotions and values and provides a taste of sharing the essence of other beings, other ways of life. If evolution - as distinct from technical progress - is to continue, then aesthetic experience will play a central role in it..
"The Art of Seeing - An Interpretation of the Aesthetic Encounter"
Mihaly Csikszentmilahyi,
Professor of Behavioural Psychology, University of Chicago _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Reports from the Australian Market
New Concepts in Innovation - The Keys to Growing Australia
The Business Council of Australia.
Published in March 2006, this is a ground-breaking report on innovation in Australia. Divided into two parts, the first section is an executive summary, a discussion on the definition and importance of innovation, the BCA's recommendations for national priorities for innovation and a summary of the main themes. The key findings of the report are
- innovation activity extends across all parts of a business
- innovation is not confined to research work
- the imperative to deliver customer value drives the need for and nature of innovation
- innovation in some circumstances has more to do with human capital than technology innovation.
The BCA identifies 4 priorities that they define as being vital to the development of Australian innovation capacities:
- The building of a better understanding of innovation within governments and policy makers and other relevant institutions beginning with a new whole-of-government definition of innovation.
-Emphasis on the importance to innovation in the public policy reform in the areas of taxation, workplace relations, infrastructure and regulation
- The building of stronger innovation capabilities through our training and education systems
- The deliver of innovation outcomes by providing best possible environments for innovation within our workplace.
The second part of the report prepared by Howard Partners entitled Changing Paradigms: Rethinking Innovation Policies, Practices and Programmes has a series of case studies on innovation taken from top 500 Australian companies including Foster's, Dupont, Shell, IAG and Deloitte.
The findings contained in this report have had a fundamental influence on the design of the the Creative Leadership Forum executive training and education programmes.
New Pathways to Prosperity - A National Framework for Innovation
The Business Council of Australia and the Society for Knowledge Economics
The follow up report to Concepts for Innovation entitled New Pathways to Prosperity - A National Innovation Framework for Australia developed from the BCA and the Society for Knowledge Economics is a brave attempt to begin to articulate the concept of a national framework for innovation. It highlights the possibilities when government representatives, universities and private sector executives operating with very different agendas come together to explore the common good. Its executive summary is clear. Innovation in Australia must not occur in the margins of the economy any longer. It has to be at the top and centre of the government's agenda.
In the next CLF newsletter, the Society for Knowledge Economics Executive Director, Sarah Hartcher will discuss in more detail how she sees the pathway ahead in achieving this vital objective and the SKE's role in facilitating it.
The Reality of Innovation- unzipped
An investigation in middle market Australia
The Australian Business Foundation and Deloitte.
Unlike the BCA report this paper is aimed squarely at the SME market and it cuts to the chase quickly. The research identified seven major insights into innovation in this middle market. Innovation energizes business growth and creates value; innovation fosters imaginative business models; innovation needs partners; disciplined innovation contributes to competitive outcomes; innovation motivates people; one size does not fit all and innovation is multi-faceted, complex and must be repeatable.
Each insight has an introduction and is followed by well documented case studies of which there are 53.
Major Innovation Keys.
The emerging themes are
1) Traditional business models no longer hold.
2) Creative leadership is what is required to succeed with innovation
3) The ability to be able to collaborate at all levels is vital in the process of innovation
4) Successful innovation is risky and elusive.
The Creative Leadership Forum will be exploring these themes and their implications in a series of workshops to be announced.A short bibliography that provides some good background reading on the emerging themes.
Friedman, Thomas L. - The World is Flat, A Brief History of the 21st Century
Mau, Bruce - Massive Change
Kao, John: Jamming - The Art and Discipline of Business Creativity
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly - Creativity - Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly : Good Business - Leadership, Flow and the Making of Meaning
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly - The Art of Seeing: An Intrepretation of the Aesthetic Experience
Robinson, Sir Ken - Out of Our Minds - Learning to Be Creative
Click for a link to the CLF Shop to purchase any of these titles.