Leading Organization Innovation

Who is Leading Innovation in your organization?

The marriage between technology, innovation, and business is here to stay. Currently, innovation is no longer a piece of the puzzle important to organizational growth, it is the oxygen needed for its survival and growth. In the future innovation will cease to be a role of the select few in organizations but everyone's job. The reality is that more and more organizations are discovering that innovation is everyone's job--those who own the process will lead innovation thus, technology employees will be placed in departments and they will have to be fully acquainted with the process.

What's in it for leaders?

• According to a survey by the Center for Creative Leadership,"94% of executives say innovation is important or very important, only 14% say their organization is very effective at it." How can we shift the needle from 14% upwards. It all starts with leadership: Equip Leaders to play a crucial role in stimulating and promoting innovation, a mind shift is needed to move leaders from a mere appreciation of innovation into strategic use of it. Here are tips that your organization can adopt to equip leaders to lead innovation and ensure the security of the organization with regard to survival in the turbulent market place.

• Create an Innovation Strategy: A formal innovation strategy serves as the blueprint and compass guiding the organization's innovative efforts, it provides the gateway to the creation of innovative solutions to enterprise wide problems. Your innovation strategy should lay down the organization's medium‐to‐long term vision with regard to innovation accompanied with a clear action plan. It encompasses having insight of current challenges; remember today's needs/wants are tomorrow's products and services.

• Evaluate Organizational Structure and Culture: The effectiveness of an innovation strategy is facilitated by an enabling culture and structure and an effective enterprise systems and operations. Katarzyna outlines that "organizational culture can effectively promote or inhibit cooperation, exchange of knowledge, experience and ideas." Does your current culture promote exchange of ideas or inhibits? Does the current structure fosters creativity? Remember, a culture based on strong control is not conducive to creativity and innovation."

• Assess the Enterprise: The power of an innovation strategy lies in the day to day detail of the enterprise, including culture, structure, processes, methods and knowledge management. There is great value in being proactive and terrible consequences for being reactive. An organization can influence the direction of the industry through innovation; ascertaining its ability to survive, compete and thrive in a chaotic market place--But, this potential is stimulated by leaders.

It’s time to equip human capital to lead innovation in their respective roles.

Author: Naomi Chitambira