How to Assess Your Organisation’s Capability to Innovate

Posted on August 5, 2013 by Matthew Griffin @ Innovation Excellence

In today’s rapidly evolving world the ability to create new value and the ability to be Innovative is now more important to an organisations survival than at any other time in our history.

The ability of organisations to assign the right level of resources in the right manner is critical to creating a successful Innovation Practice.

Innovation is much more than just a random amalgamation of people, processes and measurement methodologies. Innovation is the embodiment of human creativity and discovery but it only flourishes in the right environment. Creating a utopia innovation environment relies on your organisation’s ability and willingness to deliver the right resources at the right time in the right style.

Innovation Practices often contain a nucleus of creative lateral thinkers but many Executives today are still taught to exercise rational, logic centered decision making and the two cultures frequently clash leading to poor communication and ultimately reducing the Innovation Practices effectiveness.

Executives need to know what resources the Practise needs, why it needs them and if it gets them how it will leverage them to meet the organisations strategic objectives so with all of this in mind how do you assess and baseline your organisations capability and capacity to innovate and clearly determine which areas need resource?

Over the past six years the 311 Institute has studied hundreds of large Global enterprises and smaller regional organisations across a range of industries and geographies. The findings of these studies have led us to conclude that all successful innovation practises are built on six dynamically linked Foundations – Hunger, Culture, Community, Resources, Methods and Impact. In turn each Foundation contains three Blocks and each Block contains a series of questions which when collated produce an Innovation Maturity Score and clearly highlight the areas in need of improvement.

Hunger

Blocks included in this Foundation: Entrepreneurship, Creativity and Learning

The “Hunger” Foundation appraises your organisations Entrepreneurial attitude, its appetite to change and its propensity to challenge its beliefs. Every organisation is permeated by a distinctive character and while it’s never explicitly referred to in annual statements when coupled with Behaviour it becomes one of the most important enabling factors in helping create a long term, successful Innovation Practise. History has shown us time and time again that entrepreneurial organisations that have an insatiable appetite for innovation and reinvention out perform their peers by thirty at least percent.

Culture

Blocks included in this Foundation: Energy, Engagement and Enablement

The “Culture” Foundation appraises how the organisation empowers individuals to rise above every day challenges, inspire others and overcome adversity in their pursuit of innovation. This appraisal not only assesses how effectively motivational leaders breed trust and promote behaviours that align with the organisations values, goals and ethics but also appraises how willing they are to disregard red tape and implement the tough decisions needed to assure the organisations short, medium and long term prosperity.

Community

Blocks included in this Foundation: Collaboration, Safety and Simplicity

The “Community” Foundation appraises the tone of the workplace and how well people work in harmony with each other to achieve common goals. Innovation Practises are at their most effective when individuals are encouraged to gather insights from diverse groups of internal and external collaborations, openly share their opinions and empowered to make bold, intelligence led decisions.

Resources

Blocks included in this Foundation: Talent, Systems and Programs

The “Resources” Foundation appraises the accessibility to and the effectiveness of your organisations structural investment categories that need to be in place to help the Innovation Practise discover, prototype, test and market new innovations faster and more effectively. Investments types are more than monetary and must encompass a wide ranging suite of investment categories that enable the whole innovation lifecycle. Categories range from the investment in talent and systems all the way through to the gift of time and adequate working space. Collectively these investment categories all play integral roles in improving the speed, quality and return on investment.

Methods

Blocks included in this Foundation: Ideation, Testing and Speed

The “Methods” Foundation appraises the maturity and effectiveness that your organisations closed loop processes have on the overall success and morale of your Innovation Practise. Used carefully flexible, well designed processes can complement and enhance innovation but if they are deployed as blunt instruments they can also do more harm than good. Your organisation should schedule regular reviews that monitor the impact processes have on the morale and the effectiveness of innovation and your leaders must be willing to adapt them accordingly.

Impact

Blocks included in this Foundation: External, Organisational and Individual

The “Impact” Foundation appraises people’s perception and attitude towards your organisation and your Innovation Practice. Success in this factor is appraised from the perspectives of three principle groups. Firstly by people external to your organisation – business partners, competitors, analysts, investors, consumers and the media, secondly by your own Executives and thirdly by your employees. Each group will assess the impact and effectiveness of your Innovation Practise in different ways and while the majority of these perceptions will be important you must always remember to pull them back to how you and your organisation measure success.

Conclusion

Every new innovation is the product of a journey of discovery and toil. While many companies only focus on sustainable innovations and are satisfied with efficiency enhancements the companies that change the world are those that push the boundaries and disrupt existing markets while creating new ones. Disruptive innovation rarely happens by chance – it requires solid organisational support, rigid execution and an entrepreneurial spirit so if you can assess how well prepared you are for the journey ahead and adapt your organisation accordingly you’ll reach the end of your journey faster and more efficiently than your competition.

image credit: ggeden.com

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Success is Timeless.

IN 1901 THIS AUTHOR WROTE ABOUT HOW THEY SUCCEEDED: LIFE STORIES OF SUCCESSFUL MEN TOLD BY THEMSELVES (PUBLIC LIBRARY; PUBLIC DOMAIN) THIS WONDERFUL ESSAY BY BRITISH NOVELIST AMELIA E. BARR (1831-1919) WHO,  DESPITE DEVASTATING LOSS OF HER HUSBAND AND THREE OF THEIR SIX CHILDREN TO YELLOW FEVER IN 1867, WENT ON TO BECOME A SUCCESS.  DESCRIBES 9 BASIC PRACTICES TO BECOME SUCCESSFUL AT WHATEVER WE CHOOSE TO TAKE-ON.

The avenue to success is timeless…..

1. Men and women succeed because they take pains to succeed. Industry and patience are almost genius; and successful people are often more distinguished for resolution and perseverance than for unusual gifts. They make determination and unity of purpose supply the place of ability.
2. Success is the reward of those who “spurn delights and live laborious days.” We learn to do things by doing them. One of the great secrets of success is “pegging away.”  No disappointment must discourage, and a run back must often be allowed, in order to take a longer leap forward.
3. No opposition must be taken to heart. Our enemies often help us more than our friends. Besides, a head-wind is better than no wind. Who ever got anywhere in a dead calm?
4. A fatal mistake is to imagine that success is some stroke of luck. This world is run with far too tight a rein for luck to interfere. Fortune sells her wares; she never gives them. In some form or other, we pay for her favors; or we go empty away.
5. We have been told, for centuries, to watch for opportunities, and to strike while the iron is hot. Very good; but I think better of Oliver Cromwell’s amendment — “make the iron hot by striking it.”
6. Everything good needs time. Don’t do work in a hurry. Go into details; it pays in every way. Time means power for your work. Mediocrity is always in a rush; but whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing with consideration. For genius is nothing more nor less than doing well what anyone can do badly.
7. Be orderly. Slatternly work is never good work. It is either affectation, or there is some radical defect in the intellect. I would distrust even the spiritual life of one whose methods and work were dirty, untidy, and without clearness and order.
8. Never be above your profession. I have had many letters from people who wanted all the emoluments and honors of literature, and who yet said, “Literature is the accident of my life; I am a lawyer, or a doctor, or a lady, or a gentleman.” Literature is no accident. She is a mistress who demands the whole heart, the whole intellect, and the whole time of a devotee.
9. Don’t fail through defects of temper and over-sensitiveness at moments of trial. One of the great helps to success is to be cheerful; to go to work with a full sense of life; to be determined to put hindrances out of the way; to prevail over them and to get the mastery. Above all things else, be cheerful; there is no beatitude for the despairing.

• Apparent success may be reached by sheer impudence, in defiance of offensive demerit. But men who get what they are manifestly unfit for, are made to feel what people think of them. Charlatanry may flourish; but when its bay tree is greenest, it is held far lower than genuine effort. The world is just; it may, it does, patronize quacks; but it never puts them on a level with true men.    

• It is better to have the opportunity of victory, than to be spared the struggle; for success comes but as the result of arduous experience. The foundations of my success were laid before I can well remember; it was after at least forty-five years of conscious labor that I reached the object of my hope. Many a time my head failed me, my hands failed me, my feet failed me, but, thank God, my heart never failed me.

Honesty by Technological Verification

Twenty eight years ago when I entered the hospitality industry lie detection was a required instrument to fish through your staff to find the unworthy employee, I.E., the truth.  Most times the detection would not fester out the individual who was being tested, rather that person would rat out a co worker.  


Now with the technological tools provided by the internet, social networks, plagiarism detection software and information exchange algorithms we are all subjected to instant information verification.  This expedition is not just a tool to check down the ladder
of the business hierarchy, it allows the verification up the ladder; where C-level to the 
board room's credentials, proposals and presentations can be instantly proven.  
Included in this has been President Obama's virtual polygraph exam.


Per Michael Schrage blog  -  "But the real revolution emerging is not the greater transparency of a LinkedIn here and the statistical significance of a "lie detection" algorithm there; it's their linkage, fusion and aggregation."
Interesting that as we have advanced, we still just seek the truth.