Module-V

You’ve heard it before: innovation is the key to success. However, what does innovation
mean in the business environment? How do companies develop a mindset, that is, an
innovative mindset that generates significant results?

Despite massive investments of time and money, innovation remains a

frustrating task in many companies. Innovation initiatives often fail, and
successful innovators find it difficult to sustain their performance – Nokia,
Yahoo!

Why is it so difficult to build and maintain the capacity to innovate? The

reasons are much deeper than the commonly cited cause: a failure to execute.
The problem with efforts to improve innovation is rooted in the lack of a truly
effective strategy.

Good strategies promote alignment among diverse groups within an

organization, clarify goals and priorities, and help focus efforts around them.

Companies regularly define their overall business strategy (their scope and
position) and specify how various functions-marketing, operations, finance,
and R & D-will support it. But they rarely articulate action plans to align their
innovation efforts with macro business goals.

It is important to remember that an innovation strategy is a plan used to

encourage breakthroughs (in technology, services, products, processes, etc.),
usually by investing money and human resources in research and
development activities.

An innovation strategy is essential for companies that want to gain a

competitive advantage. It should be inspiring and add something unique to
the product, service, process or business model that is being developed or that
already exists.

When you think of innovation, it’s impossible not to remember Apple. The
company founded by Steve Jobs has created and continues to create exclusive
products with great success. The iPhone, iPad and iWatch were all
groundbreaking products. They did not come out of nowhere. Jobs realized that
the cell phones Could better exploit the internet; the same happened with the
other gadgets of the company that revolutionized the market.
What is the innovation mindset?

Often, an innovation strategy does not go forward because the mindset of the
people involved (from the high organizational hierarchy to the professionals
in charge of performing the most mundane tasks) is not prepared for it.

In recent years, the term “innovation mindset” has gained strength among
scholars and has become popular on the internet. It emerges as a semantic
symbol of this effort to get organizations moving toward the innumerable
possibilities for innovation.

There is no strategy without people, even though technology has co-starred all
the great advances that we know today. That’s why the innovation mindset is
so important. People with an innovative mindset have forward thinking, are
creative and open to testing, making mistakes and trying again; collaborative
and progress-loving, they do not love the past – they know the new is always
coming!

The innovation mindset, believe me, is a big differential of giants like Apple,
but also of the startups created in the garages, in the coworking spaces in our
lives. United through innovative thinking, professionals involved in the day-
to-day running of an organization can overcome barriers, idealize and
generate truly disruptive processes, products and services.

5 Steps to Implementing a Mindset of Innovation in Your Business

To overcome the challenges, therefore, it is fundamental to implement a

mindset of innovation, that is, to insert in the organizational culture the
innovative thinking.

Here are five steps to start building that mindset in your business today.

Step 1: Develop or Improve Your Innovation Strategy

As we have seen, the adoption of an innovative mindset has to do with the

implementation of small incremental changes that pave the way for
continuous improvement and growth. But you cannot do this without
strategic planning.

The best thing, therefore, is to put on paper the objectives to be achieved in

terms of innovation, methods and tools to be used, action plans (with their
specified responsible parties), metrics and performance indicators to be
measured. In short, a strategic planning – only 100% focused on innovation. It
is worth remembering that running it from agile practices promotes a huge
gain in efficiency.
Step 2: Set up an innovation committee

By developing or revisiting your business innovation strategy, you have

already given your employees a clear message. Now it is important to go
further.

The next step we suggest is the organization of an innovation committee.

Bring together a select group of professionals and give them the mission of
fostering innovative culture.

It is advisable to set up a multidisciplinary and multi-hierarchical committee.

In other words: bring together people with different skills, experience, roles
and positions / responsibilities. Diversity and heterogeneity are mandatory
words!

In each company, the role of the innovation committee varies. In general

terms, its activities consist of creating the innovation portfolio, selecting ideas,
intermediating debates, measuring and communicating results of the
discussions and actions around the innovation strategy.

The main objective of this team is to suggest and build new solutions to
problems, delivering value to all involved and generating real results for the
company. Thus, the greater the plurality of ideas, the more innovative the
corporate environment becomes.

Step 3: Encourage internal and external collaboration

Another crucial point for the implementation of the innovative mentality is

collaboration. It is very important to create a climate of mutual help and
exchange of ideas.

As in other business strategies, promoting the integration of departments and

more varied teams helps a lot. Investing in internal communication,
promoting integration events, creating joint goals with seemingly “competing”
teams can help.

Likewise, encouraging collaboration with suppliers, customers, and business

partners also raises the innovation mindset. These external audiences can
help people, so engrossed in their affairs, to visualize bottlenecks, modify
processes, have disruptive ideas, among other things.

Step 4: Invest in Technology and Qualified Personnel

Everything that has been said so far can have a huge upgrade with true
investments in technology.
With good software and IT services, it is possible to better outline the
innovation strategy, provide informational and toolkits for innovation
committee staff, improve communication and collaboration (internal and
external), and more.

Likewise, hiring qualified professionals and thinking driven by innovation (or

desire to) facilitates the generation of the corporate mindset of innovation.
Putting this premise to the HR staff is well indicated.

Step 5: Cherish innovative ideas

Finally, if you are in a leadership position and/or direction of the business – if

it is not the case yet, send the link of this article to your boss, he will like it –
know that all efforts to generate the innovative mindset is with the proper
appreciation of disruptive ideas.

If innovation really is a value in your business, value the most innovative

people and teams, support initiatives, investment (time, money, tools, etc.)
and above all, the enthusiasm of leaders.

Out of the box thinking means thinking differently or unconventionally. In other

words, thinking about something from a new perspective.

Out of the box thinking is not constrained by conventional barriers that we commonly
self-impose. When you think out of the box, you explore uncommon and non-logical
ways and solutions to a problem.

The term has become very popular in business environments. Many people, in fact,
refer to it as a cliché. It is especially popular among executive coaches and
management consultants.

Creativity
Creativity and innovation are important driving forces for personal development, economic
growth, and societal advancement. Especially in the new millennium, when people are facing
fast development of new technologies, accelerating changes in life and work and when natural
or man-made disasters constantly occur, the importance of creativity and innovation cannot be
underestimated.
In this time of transition, individuals who can unleash their creative potential and make the best
of their unique creative talents will become the real winners of the competition. Companies
who can effectively manage their creative minds and innovation system will thrive in the
changing marketplace, while the less creative competitors will eventually fail and disappear.
No wonder the United Nations (UN) has listed “creativity” as a core competence that students
should develop in the UN Competency Development Guide (United Nations, 2010).
Creativity and successful innovation tools can help you work through even the
toughest of issues. By changing the way that you think about problem-solving, you
can reinvent your framework and generate more solutions

Comparison of the conceptual meanings of creativity and innovation.

CREATIVITY:
1. Stress Idea generation.
2. Not necessarily consider benefits
3. Intraindividual
4. Intrinsic motivation
5. Usually absolute novelty
6. More weight on originality

INNOVATION:
1. Stresses idea application or implementation
2. Must consider benefits
3. Interindividual
4. Extrinsic motivation
5. Usually relative novelty
6. More weight on effectiveness