A Better Tomorrow

Making Innovation Work

Success is a Journey

Not a destination

Companies that last go on successive missions rather than simply defending their ground.

Success isn’t a destination but an opportunity to embrace successive missions.

Innovation works best when it is focused as part of the mission within the overall vision of the company.

1. Does it intersect between your competency and passion?

2. Will it still be relevant in 100 years’ time?

3. Does it have a value proposition that provides focus and differentiation?

Start with a Big Idea or Vision

Follow the 3 rules of definition

Define a better tomorrow

Don’t be afraid to disrupt your business. None of your competitors will have any such hesitation.

Never bury innovation for the sake of short term profit considerations.

The future holds greater rewards for those that play the long game.

Self Disrupt

Or Self Destruct?

Innovation requires a culture of collaboration and communication both internally and externally with customers, prospects and the market.

Collaborate, Communicate

and Innovate

Innovation needs a champion: A Chief Innovation Officer.

They must have executive powers and be directly accountable.

Innovation can create internal resistance and there needs to be ownership and authority to drive through execution and often this involves every area of the organisation.

Innovation needs a champion

Hire individuals not clones.

Innovation is about looking at things differently and from different perspectives.

Hire people from different backgrounds, cultures and interests.

You need diversity to Innovate.

A company of sheep will unleash a competition of wolves

Hire for Passion, Innovation and Excellence.

Focus on attributes not qualifications.

Harness the power of Passion, Innovation, Excellence by recruiting people with these attributes.

Look for creativity, energy and drive.

Harness the power of PIE

Create a culture of creativity by empowering individuals to make a difference and improve their role, function and department.

Promote a “Better Tomorrow” through collaboration and by example.

Create a Culture of Creativity

Fear of failure destroys innovation more than anything else.

If you are going to create a culture of innovation, you need to tackle fear.

Failure is part of the process

Understand the HEART of your customer.

Go further by understanding the needs of their customers too.

You need to do more than hear what they say, but understand what they do and how to make their tomorrow better than today.

Understand the heart of your customer

Create a paradigm shift by looking at problems from a different perspective.

Henry Ford famously said “If I’d asked my customers what they wanted, they’d have said a faster horse”.

Disruptive Innovation is about redefining the problem.

Redefine the Problem

Understand the gaps around your solution and how it fits into the big picture.

By filling the gaps you can create an unequal presence in the market by completing the areas no-one else has seen.

Identify the Gaps and Connect the Dots

Remove everything that doesn’t add value. Simplify everything else.

Anyone can reflect complexity in functionality, processes and experience.

It takes real focus and ingenuity to remove complexity and simplify.

Simplicity and Speed add real value.

Remove everything that doesn’t add value

Simplify everything else

Explore the impossible.

Whatever was impossible yesterday may be possible today.

Look at different markets to see if they have solved a similar problem.

Explore new technologies.

There is always opportunity in solving the impossible because competition is rare.

Find the Impossible. Then Redefine it.

Identify and quantify risks but don’t avoid taking them.

Innovation is about taking risks, and the greatest risk to any company is to become risk adverse.

Avoiding risk is a sure route to mediocrity.

Avoiding Risk is your greatest Risk

Innovation is often the result of progressive and sequential novel steps that result in something much more disruptive at the end of the journey than apparent at the beginning.

Small changes on the Innovation Journey can lead to something far more disruptive.

Get outside-in consultancy. Having objective input from people outside the organisation is just as important as recruiting diversity into the organisation.

Often consultancy can accelerate the innovation journey through independent and objective advice and mentoring.

Innogise can help accelerate your innovation journey

Want to learn more?

The slides are based on “Business Innovation: A little book of big ideas” by Nick Whiteley (founder of Innogise)

The book is available on Kindle and Paper book formats internationally.

Purchase your copy now from:

www.amazon.co.ukwww.amazon.comwww.amazon.com.brwww.amazon.cawww.amazon.dewww.amazon.itwww.amazon.frwww.amazon.eswww.amazon.jp

www.linkedin.com/in/nicholaswhiteley

Nick Whiteley has over 20 years experience in the high tech industry serving as both Chief Technical Officer and Managing Director. Nick created a highly disruptive software product in the health market before starting innogise, a consultancy business with a focus on innovation and growth.

About the Author

@nickwhiteley

www.innogise-blog.co.uk

Nick.whiteley@innogise.com

A Better Tomorrow

www.innogise.com

www.facebook.com/innogise

http://www.linkedin.com/company/innogise-consulting