You’re a Business Innovation professional. What hard skills do you need to succeed?

I used to work as an IT Business Analyst and I can confidently say that it depends on the company, sector or industry you work in. In my experience, for instance, having project management skills such as project planning, writing, prioritization of goals, negotiation, and relevant technical skills was crucial.

Creativity can be learned again - as a child you were very creative. It's like fitness training to strengthen your creative muscles again. There are very simple exercises that you can do yourself o before you go into a brainstorming session. For example, you have lots of circles on a piece of paper and you have to turn them into objects very quickly in 1 minute by adding smily, a bicycle or ball etc... or you have a bag of lego bricks and you have to build something creative like a snow scooter with new technical features and explain them in detail to the team- interesting results :-)

In addition to generating ideas, cultivate the ability to synthesize diverse perspectives and integrate them into innovative solutions. Embrace ambiguity and complexity as opportunities for creative exploration, allowing for unconventional approaches that challenge the status quo and drive business innovation forward.

Creative thinking involves generating original ideas or solutions by breaking away from conventional thought patterns. It requires imagination, curiosity, and flexibility to explore new possibilities and perspectives. This process often involves brainstorming, lateral thinking, and problem-solving skills to uncover unique insights and connections. Creative thinking is essential across various domains, including art, science, business, and everyday life, as it fosters innovation and allows individuals to tackle challenges from different angles. It encourages individuals to take risks, challenge assumptions, and embrace ambiguity to find novel approaches.

Data analysis, project management, design thinking, and prototyping. Data analysis helps you to gather, interpret, and use data to identify problems and opportunities, and to measure the impact of your innovations. Project management helps you to plan, organize, and manage your innovation projects, and to collaborate with others effectively. Design thinking helps you to apply a human-centered approach to innovation, and to generate creative and feasible solutions. Prototyping helps you to test and refine your ideas, and to get feedback from users and stakeholders.

In addition to the #BusinessInnovation Professional's traditional hard skills—Creative/Design/Latteral/etc. Thinking—Data Analysis is crucial. Successful business innovation professionals collect, process, interpret, and communicate quantitative & qualitative data. The most successful innovators find and use unconventional sources and data to identify unique opportunities to CREATE trends, not just understand and adapt to trends. Data analysis, in the hands of the best business innovators, changes the trajectory of businesses and, in some cases, creates new industries. This kind of peripheral analysis transcends data to connect unseen dots, creating an undeniably innovative vision. #BusinessInnovation

Extend your data analysis skills beyond traditional metrics to include advanced techniques such as predictive analytics and machine learning. Leverage data-driven insights to anticipate market trends, forecast customer preferences, and identify emerging opportunities for innovation within your industry.

Data analysis involves examining raw data to uncover patterns, draw conclusions, and make informed decisions. It encompasses processes such as cleaning, transforming, and modeling data to extract useful insights. Through statistical methods, visualization techniques, and machine learning algorithms, data analysis helps identify trends, correlations, and outliers. It plays a crucial role in various fields, including business, science, healthcare, and finance, aiding in strategic planning, problem-solving, and predictive analytics. Effective data analysis enables organizations to optimize processes, enhance performance, and gain a competitive edge in today's data-driven world.

While project management is an essential hard skill for #BusinessInnovation professionals, do not confine your options to traditional methods like agile, scrum, waterfall, and lean. These are iterations of centuries-old methods. Take the best of all business models and methods to create your own project management approach that fits your objectives. Then, you can plan, execute, monitor, and lead (not control) the work of your team and organization. Business Innovation professionals see the big picture, how the innovation project contributes, and what project management elements best suit the intended outcome.

Project management involves planning, organizing, and overseeing tasks and resources to achieve specific goals within a set timeframe and budget. It includes defining objectives, allocating resources, scheduling activities, and monitoring progress to ensure successful completion of projects. Effective project management requires skills in communication, leadership, problem-solving, and risk management. It is essential for coordinating teams, mitigating obstacles, and delivering outcomes that meet stakeholder expectations.

Enhance your project management skills by mastering agile methodologies and lean principles. Embrace flexibility and adaptability in project execution, enabling rapid iteration and experimentation to accelerate the pace of innovation while minimizing risks and maximizing value delivery.

Digital skills encompass the abilities to effectively navigate, utilize, and create content using digital technologies. They include proficiency in using software and applications, understanding digital tools and platforms, and adapting to new technological advancements. Digital skills are essential for tasks such as communication, research, data analysis, and problem-solving in various domains. They enable individuals to stay competitive in the modern workforce, facilitate access to information and resources, and empower participation in digital communities and economies.

Stay abreast of emerging digital technologies and platforms, exploring their potential applications for driving business innovation. Develop proficiency in areas such as cybersecurity, cloud computing, and digital marketing to harness the power of technology for creating disruptive solutions and gaining competitive advantage.

Design thinking is a powerful tool for business innovation. It's a human-centered, iterative approach that uses various stages like empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test. This allows us to deeply understand user needs, define problems effectively, and brainstorm creative solutions. By rapidly prototyping and testing, we validate ideas early, reducing risk of failure and increasing the chances of success by focusing on solutions that truly address user needs. This collaborative process also fosters a culture of innovation, encouraging experimentation and leading to breakthrough solutions.

DT is perfect to understand the customer and which problems / challenges or improvements can be worked out in an e.g. journey map. Creative habits of DT are to define the challenges (HMW) to then create, select and test ideas with quick prototypes to get feedback. DT is a human-centered approach, whereby there is a tendency to focus not on the human but on nature (called Planet-centric) and the human is a component of this environment. Service Design, System Thinking are all important components in a DT process.

Design thinking is a problem-solving approach that emphasizes empathy, creativity, and collaboration to generate innovative solutions. It involves understanding user needs, brainstorming ideas, prototyping, and testing to address complex challenges. Design thinking encourages iterative processes and embraces failure as part of the learning journey. It is widely used in various fields, including product design, business strategy, and social innovation, to develop user-centered and impactful solutions.

Expand your design thinking toolkit beyond the traditional stages to include methods such as biomimicry and co-creation. Emphasize empathy and inclusivity in the design process, ensuring that solutions are not only viable and feasible but also desirable and sustainable from a human-centered perspective.

Business innovation professionals must continually expand their business acumen by exploring and learning various business models. Finance, marketing, strategy, operations, and leadership are standard concept titles. However, they are applied in a multitude of ways across industries. Keep adding new insights to your knowledge base, and your business acumen grows to Innovative business acumen. #BusinessInnovation

Business acumen refers to the ability to understand and interpret business situations, make sound decisions, and drive successful outcomes. It involves a combination of financial literacy, market understanding, strategic thinking, and critical analysis. Business acumen enables individuals to identify opportunities, mitigate risks, and contribute to the overall success of an organization. It encompasses skills such as financial management, sales and marketing, risk assessment, and problem-solving. Strong business acumen is essential for effective leadership, entrepreneurship, and career advancement in the business world.

Deepen your understanding of global market dynamics and industry trends, honing your ability to identify untapped market opportunities and anticipate potential disruptors. Cultivate strategic thinking and financial literacy to align innovation initiatives with organizational goals and drive sustainable growth and profitability.

There are also various ways to encourage creativity. One good way is to watch regular TedEx sessions on specific topics. These new insights also encourage creative thinking as you can quickly relate these topics to your business challenges/content and generate new ideas. Additionally, books such as Business Transformation, New Technologies etc are very helpful as there are usually many business challenges and use cases shared. This also foster the creative thinking process from the learnings and how to approach such topics differently in your business context.

I’d also highlight trust, resilience, and collaboration. Innovation means being unafraid to learn from repeated failures - if you fear failure in your organization (or if you don’t trust your org to support your path) you’re likely more risk averse to true disruptive transformation. If you do trust your org - resilience to the likelihood of your many failures (aka “lessons learned”) will help maintain your innovative mindset. When Edison faced over 10,000 failed attempts at the lightbulbs his response was “I have not failed I just learned 10,000 ways that won’t work.” Lastly - innovation cannot happen in a box. No one person can do it all. Trust and engage those with the capabilities you lack to really move the innovative needle.

All of the hard skills listed above are superseded by curiosity. You could be an expert in all those skills but, if you don't have the curiosity to play with concepts, try new things, and go down dead ends, then you won't reach your potential for innovation. Conversely, if you are weak on the hard skills, but are curious and playful, you'll succeed.

Consider developing your leadership skills to inspire and empower teams to embrace innovation and drive organizational change. Foster a culture of experimentation and continuous learning, encouraging individuals to take calculated risks, learn from failures, and adapt quickly to evolving market conditions. By fostering a supportive environment that values innovation and creativity, you can unlock the full potential of your team and propel your organization to new heights of success.