THE TASK OF INNOVATION IS EVERYBODY’S ROLE
A few years back I visited the headquarters of what then was a big-fortune-100, company. This visit ‘stuck’ with me in a vivid way. Everybody was kind, hospitable and accommodating, but the GAP between the business they were famous for and the rather old-fashioned way of doing this business was quite clear amidst the digitisation explosion era.
One of their CEO’s proud moments during the presentation was when he spoke about their innovation unit. “They sit in a different building, elite group of 25 people”, he said, “They are busy all day long re-inventing new products for us without disturbing the organization. We owe them a lot”, he concluded.
It does NOT work like that, I was thinking. It NEVER does.
To start with, Innovation is a MINDSET encompassing: creativity, courage and the willingness to probe and question the status-quo. How can that be a task of less than 1% of your workforce ?
And then, Innovation of products is only a small subset of many other types of innovation – in finance, HR, business models, how you handle your customers and even how the receptionist greats employees and customers.
Innovation is the TASK OF EVERYBODY in the organization and it should be a daily-job of re-inventing and/or perfecting what we do.
You’d be surprised, how many organisations still treat Innovation as a ‘special ELITE UNIT sitting in the other building’.
And so, in order to instate this mindset, we have to not only encourage CURIOSITY, but also actively train ALL people and give them the right frameworks and tools to do so. Yes, All people, including the receptionist and the one that is responsible to open the parking garage bar. Does everybody in your organization have innovation in mind and do they dare bring it forward, Or do they accept the way it is?
Food for Thought !