Innovation Is Everyone's Job - Ron Ashkenas - Harvard Business Review

To what extent are you responsible for innovation in your company? The reality is that unless they're in research or product development, most people in organizations don't think of themselves as innovators. In fact, many managers discourage their people from inventing new ways of doing things — pushing them instead to follow procedures and stay within established guidelines. I was reminded of this distinction between "official innovators" and "everyone else" when I met with a group of high potential managers in a consumer products company. While everyone agreed that innovation should be accelerated in the firm, many felt powerless to act on it. "After all," they said, "new products need to come out of the labs."

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“Flying people, not planes”: The CEO of Bombardier on building a world-class culture - McKinsey Quarterly

Pierre Beaudoin explains how a company driven by engineering goals learned to focus on customer expectations, teamwork, and continuous improvement. Canada’s Bombardier was founded in 1942 to make snowmobiles and similar equipment. Today, it makes trains and airplanes and is the world’s number-one train manufacturer and number three in civil aircraft.1 The company’s revenue and stock price have held up during the downturn. Over the past couple of years, it has significantly boosted its investments for growth, most notably an entirely new airplane design: the CSeries, a transcontinental commercial airliner with significantly lower emissions and running costs than existing planes have.

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How To Build a Creative Organization - Alicia Arnold, BusinessWeek

A 2010 study of 1,500 chief executives conducted by IBM's (IBM) Institute for Business Value identified creativity as the No. 1 leadership competency of the future. This paints a broad role for creativity in the business world in spurring economic growth. Creative solutions are needed for organizations to thrive, but how can business leaders deliberately increase creativity? Allow us to introduce the four Ps of Creativity, a holistic model for looking at creativity that leverages People, Products, Process, and Press to build creative competency, develop radically innovative solutions, and increase revenue.

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Why Arts Based Learning is The Next Organisational Learning and Development Frontier

Below is an excerpt from the editorial of the latest Journal of Business Strategy Volume 31, Series 4 written by Harvey Seifter and Ted Buswick and at the bottom of this excerpt you will find Nick Nissley's article "Arts Based Learning at Work " that provides an excellent global overview of this emerging phenomena. For about 20 combined years, a large part of our professional energies and personal passions have been engaged by the use of artistic skills, processes and experiences as learning tools: in complex global corporations, small and medium-sized businesses, professional associations, universities, historical and cultural centers, government agencies, leadership academies, and non-profit organizations.

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Need Speed? Slow Down - Harvard Business Review - Jocelyn R. Davis and Tom Atkinson

In business, there’s a speed gap: It’s the difference between how important a firm’s leaders say speed is to their competitive strategy and how fast the company actually moves. That gap is significant regardless of region, industry, company size, or strategic emphasis. Organizations fearful of losing their competitive advantage spend much time and many resources looking for ways to pick up the pace. Paradoxically, they should try slowing down instead. In our study of 343 businesses (conducted with the Economist Intelligence Unit), the companies that embraced initiatives and chose to go, go, go to try to gain an edge ended up with lower sales and operating profits than those that paused at key moments to make sure they were on the right track. What’s more, the firms that “slowed down to speed up” improved their top and bottom lines, averaging 40% higher sales and 52% higher operating profits over a three-year period. How did they defy the laws of business physics, taking more time than competitors yet performing better?

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