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Innovation Strategy & Culture

The ongoing viability of any organisation is dependent on its ability to continually innovate. The ones that get it right are rewarded, but most struggle to build the culture that can be relied on to yield a stream of successful innovations year-on-year.

Seven essentials that deliver a culture of innovation 

Our research and over two decades of on-the ground experience has led us to conclude that the leaders who have the strongest innovation track record do not rely on innovation metamorphosing out of ad hoc and stand-alone efforts — each competing against one another across the business for time, money, attention, and accolades.

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Rather, organisations with a strong culture of innovation successfully master seven essentials which together we call Full Blown Innovation:

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  1.  Balance the business

  2. Create shared understanding and ambition

  3. Reward curiosity

  4. Everyone participates

  5. Create capable and accountable innovation leaders

  6. Expansive Innovation

  7. Measure what matters.

 

These seven essentials prepare the soil and the climate your organisation needs to cultivate innovation. Organisations that focus on these seven essentials venture successfully on the journey towards creating a culture of innovation. We must stress these seven elements are just the start. Building a culture of innovation is a long-term commitment. 

Seven essentials for building a culture of innovation

Innovation is not that dissimilar to growing new life

A little over fifty years ago, under the inspired leadership of John F. Kennedy, humanity placed a man on the moon. It took four-hundred thousand engineers, scientists, and other experts nearly a decade to achieve the impossible. Right now, your washing machines have more computing power than the scientist had available back then, yet we’ve never gone back. What happened?

 

It is related to leadership and innovation. They are compatible, but are also two very different things. Leaders are not appointed. Leaders are followed and good leaders create the environment where people can put their ideas together and converge existing with emerging technologies to go after moonshots. Good leadership gives innovators the freedom to dream.

 

Indeed, innovation is not that dissimilar to growing new life. It’s a delicate thing. You must do everything to create the right environment. You put fertiliser into the ground. You give it warmth and sunlight, but not too much. You give it water, but not too much or too little either. Get it right and growth flourishes. Get it wrong and growth withers away. 

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Your responsibility as a leader delivering innovation in the Fourth Industrial Revolution is to ask the question: What is the right environment in which innovation will thrive?

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We work with our clients to answer this question by taking the mystery out of innovation applying seven essentials to create a culture of exploration and innovation.

Innovation is culture

The paradox of innovation is this: Too often, organisations seek out a single magical innovation formula. They then lock themselves into one type of strategy and say: “This is how we innovate.” For a while it works. But eventually the returns diminish. Organisations can avoid this by recognising innovation is a culture, not a process. Building a culture of innovation requires focusing on seven areas which might at first appear counter-intuitive. Our seven part framework called Full Blown Innovation, offers you the tools to deliver the culture needed to be innovative. Full Blow Innovation has been formulated from TomorrowToday Consulting’s extensive research and our experience, spanning over twenty year s across almost every industry sector with clients in over one hundred countries.

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Meet Our Innovation Consulting Leaders

Our Future Trends consulting team partners with the private and public sector on creating insights, analysing trends and designing strategies, that shape the future. These are our global leaders on the topic.

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