UNDERPINNING OF DRIVING ORGANIC GROWTH BLOG

I am reissuing a post I did earlier to describe the basis of this blog for the many new members that attended this week's KIN meeting.

Thanks to Cargill for being great hosts and especially Dave Patchen for sharing his incredible experiences with the KIN!!!


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 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 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 are of course the basis for innovation. 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 is the final component to a successful innovation effort and we will share what different companies have tried.

Have a great weekend