Innovation Is Only An Outcome!!

(These are the opening remarks I made at the first meeting of AGSM Executive Programmes Roundtable on Leadership, Creativity and Innovation) The word innovation, still in these very hard and disturbing times appears almost daily in the media. There are 360 million references to innovation on Google and on my Google Daily RSS feed I receive notice of new books and articles released daily globally on the topic. And now I get emails daily suggesting that innovation will be the saviour of the current economic times. Every job advertisement talks about the applicant having the need to be creative and innovative. It appears this thing called innovation is a common everyday occurrence. The reality is one might be able to talk about it as if it is. In practice, the reality is very different. Innovation is an outcome. Nothing more. Creativity and invention with their fellow travellers risk, experimentation and the until more recently undiscussable “f” word “failure” are the drivers of innovation.

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Does marketing for SME's equivocate the needs of larger organisations in our current economy

Recently I caught up with an old aquaintance who had some information relevant to SME's and their marketing. It is interesting how these ideas can also be applied to larger organisations Here is a summary... The talk of the economy and its impact on SME’s surrounds us daily. The media reinforces the tough times that consumers are currently experiencing and the business world watches on as the ASX continues to fluctuate. This is weakening both consumer confidence and the consumer spending that has been buoying our economy for the last 12 years or more. Obviously this downturn in spending and confidence sees many companies ‘retreat’ (cut their marketing budgets) in order to weather the financial storm. This strategy of course is an easy one to justify (especially by those responsible for finances) and has the added advantage of seemingly bolstering (some would say, camouflaging) earnings by simply cutting marketing costs as an expense to the company.

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The Future of Social Enterprise

This paper considers the confluence of forces that is shaping the field of social enterprise, changing the way that funders, practitioners, scholars, and organizations measure performance. The authors trace a growing pool of potential funding sources to solve social problems, much of it stemming from an intergenerational transfer of wealth and new wealth from financial and high-tech entrepreneurs. They further examine how these organizations can best access the untapped resources by demonstrating mission performance, and then propose three potential scenarios, outlined below, for how this sector might evolve.

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