How to turn your business into an Innovation Powerhouse

To truly embrace innovation, it must be more than a buzzword used on a website. It requires a deliberate effort to confront the challenges of today's volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous business world. This involves implementing management practices that can enhance innovation within teams and companies.

Firstly, manage for innovation by identifying barriers to innovation success, including misconceptions, practical limitations, and cultural and leadership factors, is crucial. As a leader, it is your responsibility to set direction for your team, manage failure, and cultivate a positive culture. To foster innovation, small, diverse teams and effective divergent techniques should be utilized. Measuring progress over time, evaluating team output and productivity, and gathering external feedback are essential. When brainstorming, prioritize quantity over quality and explore unconventional ideas to maximize creativity.

You must change simplistic perceptions of innovation and acknowledge there are different types of innovation, Open Innovation (OI) is a highly effective approach to innovation, which has been estimated by Deloitte to increase the chances of success for drugs by three times. Business model innovation can lead to a new way of seeing the components of your company, break away from the silos and see the potential of changing the elements and how that can transform the greater whole. Jobs Thinking and Service Innovation promote outside-in thinking and use new paradigms to discover new opportunities and competitive advantages.

In order to break the mould and move away from the same approaches and solutions, it's beneficial to expose employees to new stimuli. This involves seeking out diverse experiences and interactions and training, which can spark fresh ideas, comparisons and inventive solutions. There may be unknown viewpoints or information, and engaging with a variety of people and concepts can lead to unique outcomes.

Unlock untapped management potential with innovation coaching Having the same approach will lead to more of the same versus generating novel outcomes. Break free from limiting mindsets and achieve innovative results. Embrace fresh insights drawn from seemingly unrelated concepts for a renewed outlook on innovating and solving problems.

Promote different types of divergent thinking and the means of generating ideas. divergent, Brainstorming is old news, what about Question storming? creating thinking techniques like analogies, visual literacy, reframing and disruptive questioning can inspire a range of new ideas. The accepted philosophy of quantity over quality is conducive to creating a safe space for unfiltered, spontaneous ideas to emerge. From there you can converge , prioritise and get practical.

Most important is the acknowledgment that innovation is a deliberate and intentional whole of company effort. Its does not happen magically or without contributions from the top to the bottom of your business.