3 Inspiring Innovation Blogs You Should Read

Innovation is frustrating a lot of times. That's why I like to share 3 blogs from my new book Inspiration for Innovation to inspire you and cheer you up!

It's not I-nnovation. It's We-nnovation.

A wise lesson I learned is ‘you can invent on your own, but in an organization, you can’t innovate alone’. You need an awful lot of colleagues and bosses to get your vision transformed into a new product or service and get it on the market. You need R&D engineers, production managers, IT staff, financial controllers, marketers, service people, and salesmen to develop the product, produce it, get it on the market, and service it. That's why it's rather 'We-nnovation instead of I-nnovation.

Now don't make the mistake of surrounding yourself with only the so-called innovators. Your organization is like a herd of animals. The herd goes as fast as the slowest animals. If the non-innovators lean back nothing moves. The way to get people more innovative is to respect them, to understand them, to connect with them, and to let them experience innovation is necessary. They will only change their attitudes if they get new insights themselves. So, create a situation where they discover for themselves what is happening in the world: how markets, customers, competitors, and technology are changing. Talking to customers with changing needs, discovering new upcoming competitors, and exploring new technologies will 'open them up'. That's how you create momentum for 'We-nnovation'.

Should we have an innovation department?

Should an organisation have an innovation department? It all depends on what kind of innovation department. One that facilitates innovation or one that monopolises innovation?

In a lot of situations, the most creative people are gathered in a new innovation department, and asked to innovate the company. Specialising innovation in such a way has the big advantage that, as they are made responsible, innovation gets attention of dedicated people. The bad news however is that the rest of the organisation tends to lean back. The innovation team itself as a consequence, tends to monopolise innovation to make speed. As soon as you get to the execution phase though, you need a lot of other departments to develop, produce, market and service the new initiatives. And that’s when a big problem occurs. Others in the company who were not connected to the innovation projects will criticize and reject it as they see no extra value due to a lack of ownership.

So when you launch an innovation department, be sure to give it a facilitating role, enabling the rest to become innovative themselves. Staff the department with innovation facilitators which guide innovation teams and project leaders of other departments on their innovation journey with the right tools and methods. In this way the rest of the organisation stays in the lead and responsible for innovation, supported by a central innovation staff, which creates ownership. Of course, with more people involved the time to market might be longer, but that is better than no market introduction at all. 

The Perfect Innovation Team

A question I am often asked is, 'What is the ideal team in innovation?' To answer, I love to refer innovation teams to The Mayo Clinic’s Center for Innovation. The Mayo Clinic is a best-practice organization in healthcare innovation. It favours a specific combination of personalities when it builds innovation teams.

The Mayo Clinic strives to include nine specific personality types when composing innovation teams:

1. The Visionary: The force behind creating the world as it could be—and should be.
2. The Generator: The generator of the idea that gets an innovation rolling.
3. The Iterator: An idea-engineer who takes the original idea and turns it into an innovation.
4. The Customer Anthropologist: The keen observer of what customers truly hunger for.
5. The Tech Guru: The harnesser of technology to turn the innovation into reality.
6. The Producer: The champion of flow. The master of moving ideas along.
7. The Communicator: The one who amplifies and clarifies the idea in the minds of others outside the team.
8. The Roadblock Remover: With a hammer, or with or velvet gloves, knocks away organization, political, and financial roadblocks.
9. The Futurecaster: The forecaster and modeler of the economic and social value of the future of innovation.

Does your innovation team resemble this combination of these personalities?

Ps. When you like these blogs, please check out my new book Inspiration for Innovation at Amazon or other online management book shops. Cheers!

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