UNDERPINNING OF DRIVING ORGANIC GROWTH BLOG

Hello everyone and welcome to the Kellogg Innovation Network (KIN) company representatives. Our group now includes the alumni of the May “Driving Organic Growth” executive education program and the KIN members.

We have already posted a couple of what we call “innovation nuggets” that have been well received. Before going forward, I wanted to put some underpinning structure to the blog to better organize our thoughts. After much investigation, I found four critical components of a successful corporate innovation effort:

LEADERSHIP
Leadership must foster a bottoms-up stream of innovation opportunities….and to commit top down to prioritize innovation projects
Geoffrey Moore, Dealing with Darwin

Leaders must: frame the overall innovation effort; make the critical resource decisions in a transparent fashion; clear any obstacles that would impede momentum; legitimize the initiatives within the corporation; and, play a major role in setting the climate for innovation.

CORPORATE CLIMATE
GE will now have to square its traditional Six Sigma metrics, which are all about control, with its new emphasis on innovation, which is more about managing risk
Business Week, The World’s Most Innovative Companies

This critical area deals with the: cultural barriers to growth through innovation; the skills required; the incentive systems to create the right behavior; the managing systems and attitude. We have found that managing business risk is an absolutely critical component to a successful, sustainable innovation effort.

IDEAS
Companies are increasing rethinking the fundamental ways in which they generate ideas and bring them to market – harnessing external ideas while leveraging their in-house R&D outside their current operations.
Henry W. Chesbrough, Open Innovation

Innovation of course starts with ideas. Where they come from is changing dramatically. We will discuss this thoroughly going forward. However, you will fall way short if all you do is generate ideas…..

PROCESS
Process makes" innovation routine, not random; central, not marginal; exciting, not scary
imaginatik blog

This is the final component to a successful innovation effort and we will share what different companies have tried.

I have a great visual for this model but could not paste it to the blog. I will send it to you separately via e-mail.

Have a great weekend!