Overview: Innovation Strategy
While innovation can’t be turned on like a tap, it is something you can make more likely to happen.
Creating a favourable environment for innovation starts with getting the basics right:
- integrating your internal and external communications strategies,
- combining them with knowledge management tools and processes,
- and integrating training and employee engagement programmes.
In other words, what I mean by digital transformation.
Integrating these strategies, processes and tools provides a strong foundation onto which you can build dedicated innovation processes.
However, building and integrating them is itself a major innovation challenge!
Sidestep this chicken-and-egg problem by framing each strategy and programme as key components of the final, integrated goal: to build an Internal Innovation Community, which:
- supports knowledge management, information flows, (in)formal training, ideation, employee engagement and more
- helps your external communications team discover useful internal content, and transfer it outwards
- ensures useful external information reaches the right people inside
- spreads an innovation & communications culture throughout the organisation.
But don’t try and build it all at once. Instead, build and roll out one part of the Programme, and then use it to build and roll out the next.
Like to figure out how? Get in touch.
More services: start with Communication strategy.
Relevant resources
www.gsb.stanford.edu
Why do companies so often fail to adapt? ... no shortage of ways ... But ... firms need to recognize the need for change ... organizations tend to operate ... blind momentum... why are they slow to change course? ...very difficult to study how companies adapt ... need both a large sample of firms and a reliable way of quantifying their choices....…
www.fastcocreate.com
Distributed intelligence means you need to find a social process, not a data-driven solution... You cannot outsource leadership to your analytics group. - Thinking Small: 3 Ways To Remain Creative In A World Of Big Data | Co.Create | creativity + culture + commerce
www.mckinsey.com
"in the cause of wider employee participation... there’s more to success than just investing heavily in the latest Enterprise 2.0 technology platforms. Large-scale engagement of the workforce requires, first and foremost, a firm grasp of organizational culture and its social dynamics, a psychological understanding of what triggers new behavior, …
medium.com
"digital transformation... the application (or reapplication) of digital technologies and the restructuring of operations to better engage with customers, the company ecosystem, and the greater marketplace... We have rocketed into a new economy - a new era - where much of what we knew and relied upon ten years ago is being superseded by new ins…
hbr.org
A timely and interesting article... "Gossip is an effective way of achieving these goals in an unhealthy social system. People engage in gossip when they lack trust or efficacy. We become consumers of gossip when we don’t trust formal channels... We become purveyors of it when we feel we can’t raise sensitive issues more directly... The problem w…
www.digitaltonto.com
"research into network science has begun to shed light on how synchronization happens and how we can make our enterprises function more effectively.... Great overview. Of particular interest to I-Labs: - "research helps explain why it is so hard for enterprises to adapt to new challenges... leaders need to treat new initiatives not as mere organi…
www.inma.org
While aimed at news organisation leaders, a lot of these insights apply to any organisation in the content creation business today: "When your mother lectured you that “actions speak louder than words,” she was giving important advice for culture change... if the leaders aren’t setting an example of change, don’t be surprised if change is slow or…
www.psychologytoday.com
Worth a read, food for thought: "But while we love reading up on how these leaders turned the tide in their industry or organization, recent research suggests that most creative people aren't given the opportunity to lead. We love stories of creative people; we just don't want to be led by them."