Prophet is a global consultancy that helps senior marketers more effectively use branding, marketing and innovation to drive profitable growth. Their 2008 Best Practices Study, “The Making of World-Class Innovators” outlined the continuing challenges that enterprises, and senior management, face when the need to innovate meets the challenge of change.
A variety of issues make tapping into innovation’s potential benefits problematic:
- While 70 percent of corporate leaders count innovation among their top three priorities for driving growth, 65% of them are not confident in their ability to execute.
- Senior executive satisfaction with returns on innovation is declining - to 46% in 2007 from 52% in 2006.
- Some 35 percent of global CEOs surveyed cite an “unsupportive climate and culture” as the greatest barrier to innovation.
The study uncovered some underlying principles from the best practices of firms that have come the furthest in meeting the innovation imperative:
- Become a catalyst. Inspire and engage others regardless of your role in the organization.
- Get and stay connected. An innovation ecosystem has no limits or borders, and is best built on the broadest possible base. Internal and external networks of sources must be tapped and powered to unleash a rich flow of ideas.
- Articulate your strategy. Go beyond platitudes and buzzwords to ensure employees hear it and believe it - and understand how they’ve been empowered to live it.
- Encourage teams to execute. An empowered team will see the challenge through to completion when given the tools and the incentives to act.
- “Test and learn” your promising innovations. To innovate successfully requires acceptance that there’s more you don’t know than you do, and an openness to the risk that learning more may entail.
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