A big thank you to Russ Miles who hosted our most recent TTN event, ‘Business Innovation in Conjunction with New Technologies’. It was a great evening that raised lots of thought provoking discussion. See below for a brief summary of the points covered.
One reason why this group is so exciting and important:
40% of Fortune 100 companies in 2000 were not in the Fortune 100 in 2010. Lack of innovation to meet evolutionary and disruptive industry moves were the key contributors to this change.
I stated an opening position that Innovation is essentially a Cultural phenomenon and as such is supported or constrained by many, many different facets, that the group then began to discuss.
The following points were noted throughout the following discussion:
Business as Usual vs Innovation.
Don’t stifle innovation with cash and constraints!
Accepting ‘failure’ with the Sales Team.
The machinery of the organisation needs to be set up to support nurturing of people willing to take a risk.
There is no Tech vs. the Business … it’s all Business
Innovation should be seen as a natural condition.
Innovation does not need to be actively encouraged, it will ‘find a way’, however some environments will encourage it faster and make more of what natural innovation is present.
Questions asked and that set the stage as candidates for future sessions:
Making money, against Innovation?
How to promote the fact that ‘failure’ should be seen as ‘learning’?
How to beat the concept that innovation is to happen in a special ‘silo’?
How to recognise everyday innovation?
What is innovation/invention?
Would/could be measured, or not?
The challenges of nurturing innovation
The challenge of hiring and its impact on innovation. How to measure performance when ‘failure’ is to be accepted and embraced.
How to begin to approach regulatory controls that may stimulate innovation?
One key mission also emerged for our group that I liked:
To change attitudes such that “innovation is so common, we just stop talking about it as anything ‘special’”
