InnovationTrek: On Barriers to Innovation in Organizations

Tuesday, March 7, 2017

On Barriers to Innovation in Organizations

Q: Why do often truly innovative folks eager to help their organization get their ideas turned down?

A: For a whole lot of reasons.

One major category of answer is because of "group think". Another name for group think is... well... I can't write that here.

Another is organizational inertia, or opposition/adversity to change/risk (happening even when _that_ is what is called change management).

Yet another is complacency of managers/executives, coupled with potential qualifications in-balances between more "junior" idea holders and more "senior" decision makers on idea implementation.

Another artifact skewing our data is the self-filtering effect of those who report the cases. If your idea _was_ selected you are more likely to be busy implementing it than having the time to complain about it not being selected/implemented. Hence, beware of a false problem when you see one…

A somewhat more encompassing answer could have something to do with the resonance between the characteristics of the environment (openness and incentives to ideas and readiness for implementation by fast trial-and-error selection) and the expectations of those who act/work/produce ideas in it. Such resonance produces a firm's enhanced ability to survive not just today, but also the day after tomorrow...

Adrian S. Petrescu, Ph.D., J.D.
InnovationTrek
ASPetrescu@InnovationTrek.org

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy" (Sir Ernest Benn)

No comments:

Post a Comment

Linking ideas to execution.

InnovationTrek fills a long overdue need.

Since before 1984 we fight inertia, just as many did for centuries and millenniums before.

From Aesop to Ludwig Boltzman. From Emperor Hadrian to Isaac Newton. From Alexander or Darius to Albert Einstein. From Karl Benz to Aurel Persu. From the Wright brothers to Henri Coanda...

If we always only acted fit to time, we would live in a dark and cold world still. Not true?

People with ideas have always been shut down, made fun of, or seen "out there".

Instead, here ideas are welcomed. We can help make anywhere innovation friendly.

Offer and Services

We can customize our engagement with anyone based on their particular needs. These below are just a few ways in which we can help:

- delivering training Programs or independent customized Modules on Managing for Innovation (see below)
- consulting to help self-accelerate innovation in your organization (business or public/non-profit)
- diagnosis of your organization's "innovation friendliness", and recommendations for improvement
- coaching (group or individualized one-on-one) of executives or managers in the spirit of facilitating/accelerating organizational, optimal strategic decision-making or market penetration innovation
- strategic processes re-design along with clients to help self-accelerate innovation in the clients' organization
- individual career coaching
- individual life coaching
- customized services based on need

Training Program in Managing for Innovation

Introductory Module
Module 1: Brief History of Humankind across several (technologico-social) revolutions
Module 2: Lessons learned from history. Core principles of the interaction between science, technology, the economy and society
Module 3: Principles of Industrial Organization
Module 4: Opportunities and Constraints upon Innovation from the Functioning of Organizations
Module 5: Stages of innovation in theoretical perspective. Economic theory seen from a management/engineering perspective
Module 6: Stages of innovation in applied perspective. From idea generation to execution and market implementation
Module 7: Influences of the knowledge environment upon innovation [lessons from Thomas Kuhn]. Brief discussion about the role of amplifying interdisciplinarity upon developing knowledge production/utilization means and education. Performance and measurement problems. Past vs. future.
Module 8: Idea generation techniques
Module 9: Talent scouting and other Personnel Management issues pertaining to facilitating innovation
Module 10: Leadership issues and leadership and entrepreneurship training, education and societal values generation [from a Churchill and his leadership to an Edison and his industrial innovation solutions.]
Module 11: Cases. Ford, BMW, Sony, 3M, GE, Motorola, Du Pont, Apple, McDonalds etc. Invisible/shadow cases, how to find them, and their importance
Module 12: Riding the Waves. Utilizing Meta-SWOT, Structure of Argument (from Frank Fisher, Stephen Toulmin etc.), Pragmatic Eliminative Induction (from William N. Dunn, consistent with J.S. Mill and others), Six Hats (from Edward de Bono), and other analytical techniques (including Applied Perspective Thinking (APT), adapted by us as an integrated applied epistemological framework from several existing analytical techniques, Stephen Toulmin, Mason and Mitroff, Ravetz etc., all consistent with Socrates precepts) for determining ways for maximizing throughput in innovation
Module 13: Market leaders and followers. When to innovate or not?
Module 14: Engineers are not born. They are inspired. Psychology, Environmental influences and thinking into the future
Module 15: Globalization and considerations about amplifying access to and use of resources. Best practices
Module 16: Beyond this Program. Other fields of application. From reinventing one's own life to applications to governance and regulating business behavior
Concluding Module. Customized Recommendations

Tuesday, March 7, 2017

On Barriers to Innovation in Organizations

No comments:

Post a Comment

InnovationTrek

Omaha - Brussels - Bucharest

Linking ideas to execution.

Offer and Services

Training Program in Managing for Innovation

Understand Innovation in 5 Minutes, courtesy & © Gordon Graham 2008

Management v. Leadership - courtesy Tom Schulte of Linked 2 Leadership

Accountability 101--can we have innovation without true accountability?

Followers

Blog Archive