Robert Tucker, president of The Innovation Resource, is
an author, consultant, speaker, and internationally recognized
leader in the field of innovation. Formerly an adjunct
professor at the UCLA, Robert has studied innovators and
innovative companies since l981. He has continued to publish
widely on the subject and has recently published Driving
Growth Through Innovation. Robert is a frequent
contributor to publications such as the Journal of Business
Strategy, Strategy & Leadership, and Harvard
Management Update. He has appeared on CNBC, CBS News, and
was a featured guest on the PBS series, Taking the
Lead.
Driving Growth Through Innovation
As a leader, you’re either inventing the future or
managing the past. Innovation-adept companies are constantly
looking for product, process, and strategy innovations that
will grow revenues, enhance profitability, and create
competitive advantage.
Through my research, I’ve identified 23 vanguard companies
that are doing something most other companies aren’t: they’re
creating a systematic process (a lá TQM) and literally
innovating the thinking behind innovation. As a result, their
organizations are pacesetters, bringing smart new products and
services to market and generating impressive success for
customers and shareholders alike.
It’s helpful to know how innovation-adept companies are
driving their futures and what you can do to drive innovation
through your own:
1. Be Open to Opportunity: Innovation-adept firms
continuously think opportunity. Think about where your new
ideas will come from to grow your business in the future. What
opportunities exist to innovate products, processes or
strategies in your company?
2. Assault Your Assumptions: Too often, firms are
stymied by rigid assumptions about how fast they can grow,
what markets they might serve, and what existing customers
will expect tomorrow. Innovation-adept companies have
assumption-assaulting cultures and leadership.
3. Mine the Future: Mining the future is an
organized, systematic, and continual process to spot
opportunities in change.
4. Fortify Your Idea Factory: Innovation vanguard
firms make a concerted effort to “ideate” – that is, to follow
a systematic process for generating, harvesting, culling
through, and implementing the best ideas. Most important,
they’re involving everyone from employees to customers to
suppliers in the ideation process.
5. Cultivate the Culture Culture encompasses the
values, beliefs, and behaviors of your organization. To
cultivate a culture of innovation, I have six suggestions:
- assess your organization’s barriers to innovation
- address the “lack of time” barrier
- adopt practices that cause openness
- balance the mix of people to ensure a conducive culture
- support mavericks in your company
- identify and develop idea champions
6. Build the Buy-in: Behind every innovation lies a
person and a team with the passion to persuade others that it
will work. Successful innovators learn what it’ll take to gain
trust and persuade others, from the boss to the board to
colleagues, customers, and other stakeholders or key players.
Buy-in is what moves the innovation process forward and leads
to market success and profit.
