Making Innovation Happen
Saturday, January 14, 2012 at 11:04AM The corporation isn't a sturdy species. In fact, only a tiny fraction reach the age of 40, according to a study of more than six million firms by management professors Charles I. Stubbart and Michael B. Knight. "Despite their size, their vast financial and human resources, average large firms do not 'live' as long as ordinary Americans," the authors concluded.
Thursday, January 12, 2012 at 09:24AM As a senior executive, you may think you know what Job Number 1 is: developing a killer strategy. In fact, this is only Job 1a. You have a second, equally important task. Call it Job 1b: enabling the ongoing engagement and everyday progress of the people in the trenches of your organization who strive to execute that strategy. A multiyear research project whose results we described in our recent book, The Progress Principle,1 found that of all the events that can deeply engage people in their jobs, the single most important is making progress in meaningful work.
Even incremental steps forward—small wins—boost what we call “inner work life”.....More and to read the full article click here
Thursday, January 12, 2012 at 08:19AM Customer and market research, competitive benchmarking, and focusing on market share could be detrimental to your organization's future performance. These approaches are critical improvement tools. Top performing organizations have turned them into a disciplined and useful science. But they can also lead to "me-too" followership or - even worse - commodity products and services that compete only on price.
Friday, January 6, 2012 at 10:41PM SOME people say it is neither big nor clever to drink. Viz, a British comic, settled that debate with a letter from a reader who said: “I drink 15 pints a day, I’m 6 foot 3 inches tall and a professor of theoretical physics.” However, another question about size and cleverness has yet to be resolved. Are big companies the best catalysts of innovation, or are small ones better? Joseph Schumpeter, after whom this column is named, argued both sides of the case. In 1909 he said that small companies were more inventive. In 1942 he reversed himself. Big firms have more incentive to invest in new products, he decided, because they can sell them to more people and reap greater rewards more quickly. In a competitive market, inventions are quickly imitated, so a small inventor’s investment often fails to pay off. These days the second Schumpeter is out of fashion: people assume that little start-ups are creative and big firms are slow and bureaucratic. But that is a gross oversimplification, says Michael Mandel of the Progressive Policy Institute, a think-tank. In a new report on “scale and innovation”, he concludes that today’s economy favours big companies over small ones.
Friday, December 16, 2011 at 01:23PM Over the past year I have been invited by some of the largest and most successful companies in the world to introduce the arts as a catalyst for developing creativity, leadership and innovation within the organization. I’ve been working within specific business units of these global organizations, and I would describe these units as centers of excellence with an entrepreneurial appetite for creativity, innovation and the willingness to try something new. I’ve noticed the leaders who run these business units, track what’s on the leading edge, and invite “best of breed” to learn from. This approach, combined with sufficient resources, and sound-management practices, contributes to creating a culture that fosters innovation as well as excellence in business performance.
