Established organizations want to better their operations, find a new way to go to market, increase customer loyalty or any other positive outcome that betters the business; with a predictable strategy.
But better and different outcomes are not achieved in a straight line; chaos is the norm. …
in Innovation, Leadership
Something extraordinary happened to the human species over the past two centuries: Economic growth transformed everyday life and changed poverty from a near-universal condition to a limited problem. The technologies that enabled this change emerged largely in Western Europe. Why there and not, say, in China?
The Washington Post explores why the industrial revolution didn’t happen in China in a fascinating interview with economic historian Joel Mokyr.…
in Innovation
I was recently invited to give a talk at a conference in Mexico about agile methodologies. I was not able to attend, but a colleague of mine took my place in delivering the speech about accelerating innovation inside established organizations.
Below is an email he got from one of the attendees, in Spanish. The main message is that this person works for a company that is near bankruptcy, she has tried to do things differently but is consistently turned down by her bosses with the excuse that “young people believe they know everything”.
At the end she asks “what actions would you take when you have a strategy to turn things around but not the support to implement it?”…
in Innovation, Leadership
Most organizations are not setup to hire innovators, rather they filter them out. Why? Because they follow the tried and true solid advice for making good hiring decisions: hire for culture-fit.
To hire for culture-fit is to hire for comfort, the short-term, sameness; to keep optimizing what is rather than creating what’s next. The problem with hiring for culture-fit is that if your culture doesn’t reward risk taking and learning from mistakes then you will filter out innovators.
This is how most organizations work.…
in Innovation
I was recently invited to talk at INIDE University to a group of MBA students about how to manage for innovation. As I mentioned on my previous post, managing for innovation means optimizing the core while exploring the future; these students already hold management positions in their organizations so this topic is important; and new to them. …
Jorge Barba at INIDE University talking about Innovation Strategy and Management
Where fear runs rampant, innovation dies.
I was invited to speak to a few groups of undergraduates and MBA students at INIDE university, these are people who work at established and well known companies. They are also people who are moving up in the ranks, or gaining new skills to get that top spot.
So, I was excited to get the chance to share my experience with them about the new world of innovation……
As a leader, to enable innovation in your teams, you need to create the conditions necessary for innovation to happen. That means setting bold goals, providing support and getting out of the way; but it isn’t easy.
A common innovation challenge inside established organizations is getting out of people’s way to let them put their talent to use and develop ideas that could change the course of the company.
A common strategy that is executed to overcome this challenge is to create a dedicated innovation team, one that doesn’t work on core business challenges; rather it is given time to find the next revolution by letting them play with ideas. …