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Smart Innovation

 

 

 

 

 

Innovation, Innovation Management, Innovation, Innovation Management, Innovation, Innovation Management

Innovation Leader

Leading Innovation
Leading innovation is a delicate and challenging process. You need to encourage expansive out-of-the-box thinking to generate new ideas, but also filter through these ideas to decide which to commercialize. Use a balanced "loose-tight" style of leadership for this purpose. Loose-tight leadership alternates the creation of space for idea generation and free exploration with a deliberate tightening that selects and tests specific ideas for further investment and development. Looseness usually dominates the early stages of the innovation process; in the later stages, tightening becomes more important to scrutinize the concepts and bring the selected ones to the market.
A balanced approach is essential to loose-tight leadership. Those who remain loose too long generate plenty of ideas but have difficulty commercializing them. Those who lock into the tight mode choke off all but most obvious ideas, thus confining innovation to incremental line extensions of existing products that add little value.
Encourage and Train People
Every one of your employees can be more creative if you encourage them and show how to do it. We were all imaginative as children, but gradually many of us have our creative instincts ground down by the daily routine. With proper training, your employees can develop skills in asking searching questions, adapting, brainstorming, systemic thinking, and thus rediscover their imagination.
Case in Point: Dell Computer Corporation
"It is really dangerous if everyone in a company starts thinking the same way", writes Michael Dell, Chairman and CEO of the Dell Computer Corporation. "The danger comes when you fall into the trap of approaching problems too similarly. You can encourage your people to think about your business, your industry, your customers innovatively. Ask a different question - or word the same question in a different way. By approaching a problem, a response or an opportunity from a different perspective, you create an opportunity for new understanding and new learning. By questioning all the aspects of our business, we continuously inject improvement and innovation into our culture."