new era black and red caps

new era black and red caps -

When I ask business leaders to identify which part of the innovation process their organizations struggle with the most, I typically get one of three answers:

1. We have a lot of ideas but most of them get judged as impossible or too hard to implement based on changing the way things currently are
2. We have a hard time deciding which idea or opportunity to pursue
3. We come up with a lot of good ideas but can't seem to execute on them

Interestingly, these align new era black and red caps exactly with the phases of innovation: discovery, evaluation, and execution.

In business, innovation is the act of applying knowledge to the creation of new processes, products, and services that have value for at least one of your stakeholder groups. Obviously, this requires more than just generating a slew of creative ideas. In order to produce true innovation, you have to actually do something different that has value. In other words, follow through on the good ideas. This requires a very different set of skills and resources than idea generation.

Achieving value creation from innovation requires a direct link between the proposed innovation and your strategy, plus a workforce that has the appropriate skills and abilities to discover, evaluate, and execute on the best ideas. It also requires a culture (or context) that supports innovation.

What does this new era black and red caps look like?

Creating a powerful context to support innovation starts with constantly communicating the direct link between innovation and the organization's picture of winning. It also requires behaviors that don't come naturally to most organizations. These include building and encouraging diversity, using supportive language and behaviors, and encouraging risk-taking.

Innovation needs to become an integral part of the way the entire company does business rather than something a few isolated individuals work on in some remote corner of the company. Management needs to encourage the open sharing of ideas and information, and support intra-departmental collaboration. It needs to lead the way by advocating and owning innovation, and employing flexible processes and procedures. Most of all, it needs to build an environment where people are allowed to take risks and sometimes fail -- which most organizations loathe to do.

The chances for successful innovation increase geometrically when you create a powerful context for innovation and then build a culture that supports it. However, by itself, a supportive culture will not necessarily guarantee innovation. If you're not getting any traction with your innovation efforts, it may be that your organization new era black and red caps lacks the skills and competencies to complete one or more of the following phases.