2nd Week , Day 1
Transforming for the Better
In modern business environment, if not all then most of the companies claim to be part of some kind of innovation. Specially for technology based businesses, continuous innovation is the matter of survival. To do so companies have to tap into ideas and opportunities that lie beyond formal boundaries. In today's lecture Ville Peltola explained how the process of continuous innovation was reinvented and ensured in IBM. For me the essence of whole discussion was two points
Transforming for the Better
In modern business environment, if not all then most of the companies claim to be part of some kind of innovation. Specially for technology based businesses, continuous innovation is the matter of survival. To do so companies have to tap into ideas and opportunities that lie beyond formal boundaries. In today's lecture Ville Peltola explained how the process of continuous innovation was reinvented and ensured in IBM. For me the essence of whole discussion was two points
- Value of transforming for the better should be induced inside the very DNA of organization.
- After setting the values it is important to provide an organizational setup that supports the whole process of innovation.
Setting up the uniform values across the company needs engagement of all employee in the process. This may cause internal noises in beginning but the management has to listen and channel them into a common objective of transforming for better. Better for company as well as better for customers.
Values should be supported by the organizational setup by providing opportunities to employees to propose innovative ideas. Then the process and resources to evaluate and filter the ideas on basis of the potential impact. After it the their should be the facilities available for prototyping , testing the ideas and providing the feedback on the outcomes. It is important to include those people in the process who has the passion and spark to explore new horizons. Appointments on basis of seniority, expertise or other criteria may bring those people who are not actually interested in doing the new things hence causing hurdles in the process.
One very important learning of the first session was that the higher management may provide opportunities in terms of different programs to involve employees in process of innovation but it is also important that employees themselves take initiatives to run such program from lower level of organizations. This kind of activism is always appreciated and fruitful to achieve the common goal.
Intrapreneurs - The Corporate Rebels
While corporate cultures sometimes do promote the culture of doing stuff without any meaning, going with the flow of daily routine but there are these rebels inside organizations who take the initiatives to undertake something new without being ask to do so. The take away for me were following points during the discussion of ten commandments of intrapreneurs.
- Willing to do new stuff without fear of getting fired.
- Risk taking. Although quantitative methods like business cases do provide a good insight into projects but often they can't cover the qualitative aspects that may effect the final outcome of projects so one should be bold enough to test new ideas without fear of failure.
- Stealth mode in initial phase of idea development is very important or you may find a lot of resistance from the conventional part of organization if you spread the word too early without having some visible proof of concept.
- It is important to have good relationship with people in organization, They may help you in the run during stealth mode.
- it is easier to ask for forgiveness than permission
- Honor your sponsor
The Dilemma
The discussion in the after noon session with Elina was about the hurdles for innovation inside organizations. apart from the fact that new start ups usually have financing issues, The basic highlighted problem was the attitude of organization that resist change. Then what can be helpful for innovation process. e.g Thinking by doing, Not saying no to anything attitude, and thinking about future scenarios.
Well said :)
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