Transferring Innovation Skills to Newbies: Fact or Fiction?

Expert innovators know from experience how to innovate while minimizing hassle, needless tasks and wasted effort – they’ve been successful (and unsuccessful) countless times through trial and error. Using flight simulators and surgical learning tools as examples, it’s been proven that teaching veteran skills to ‘newbies’ isn’t science-fiction, especially in more ‘exact’ disciplines such as medicine and math. But is it possible to design a crash-course that teaches young and inexperienced innovators the less-definable skills, attitudes and insights necessary to ideate, champion and implement without having to go through all the awkwardness of being a rookie? We think so, and here’s why.

10 Skills You Need to Nurture in Your Innovation Group

Organizational innovation requires discipline. And like any other discipline, it requires monitoring and training to make sure that you’re on the cutting edge of your capabilities. But what skills should you focus on building and how can you track your progress?

Innovation, Suffocation & Trump Nation

Innovation at best is like watering a nice healthy plant, making it grow and blossom; however, watering without the plant is just getting the dirt wet. Nothing happens. Currently, all over the world and with more than 100 major innovation themed events yearly, complete with great photo opportunities for local and national leadership, most nations have little to show for these super expensive efforts. It seems that we talk a lot about innovation and find ourselves stuck in the suffocation of great ideas. And, suddenly the Trump nation erupts on a high note!

The Space Between Hesitation and Commitment with Michael Gervais

Michael Gervais is a high-performance psychologist who works in the trenches of high-stakes environments, he is a recognized speaker on optimal human performance, and he is the host of the Finding Mastery podcast. What can Michael teach us about success in the corporate world? Well, just a few of the important topics Mark and Michael discuss on this week’s episode are: Why is an understanding of the space between hesitation and commitment so fundamental to raising performance? What is micro-choking, and how can you dissolve pressure? A definition of failure that challenges us to step up.

A Closer Look at the Three Skill Sets that Enable Innovation

In our previous posts, we’ve made two major points. One: innovation is vital for the long-term survival of any business. And two: a handful of crazy ideas won’t cut the mustard. Successful innovation is a complex process that requires a whole lot more than just riotous creativity. Based on academic research, and in close collaboration with professor Frederik Anseel (Ghent University), we’ve defined three innovation profiles: ideators, champions and implementers. Each of these personas has a crucial part to play in what we like to call ‘innovation dream teams’. What makes them unique and why do you need all three? Let’s take a closer look.

Urgently Wanted: The Design Driven Manager

The potential of Design Thinking becomes more and more visible because organizations like Apple, Coca-Cola, IBM, Nike en Proctor & Gamble not only show overtly that they use it, but start showing significant results. They outperformed their peers in the last decade with 219%, measured by the Design Value Index (assessment by Design Management Institute).

Understanding the Innovative Mindset: Can it be learned?

Where do creativity and innovation come from? It’s an age old question: are creativity and innovation innate abilities, something you’re either born with or not, or can they be learned? While the debate continues, the data is increasingly pointing to the fact that qualities like creativity and innovation are largely learned behaviours.

How Innovation and Authenticity Complement Each Other in a Corporate Environment

Authenticity and innovation are two of today’s biggest corporate buzzwords. They are often considered as separate values, but in reality they have much in common and in this article we will examine the areas of overlap and potential leverage benefits.

Key Abilities of Effective Innovation Leaders

In the last chapter excerpt of The Innovation Formula we looked at the role of the business leader, including key strategies to communicate the purpose of innovation as well as taking on the responsibility for the learning of the entire organization as it pertains to innovation. Today, we'll look at the specific abilities required to organize and inspire innovation practices in your company.

Build a Fast and Efficient Innovation Team

Since we’re obliged to pursue innovation in a competitive marketplace, speed matters. In fact, it matters a great deal, for your competitors aren’t waiting, and you cannot afford to allow them to get too far ahead. The faster you recognize new trends, threats, and opportunities, the faster great ideas get discovered and created, the faster they get to market, the faster you earn money, build brand, and extend the relevance and reach of your firm into the future.

Innovator’s Accelerator: Imparting the Skills of the Innovator

Is it possible for companies to teach the skills of innovation to leaders and teams to help secure a marketplace advantage? The six-week Innovator’s Accelerator™online program is designed to do just that: impart the skills of the innovator–as taught by industry leaders and demonstrated through case studies–in as little as one hour per day.

How to Assess an Innovation Training Program

As innovation becomes an important skill set, large organizations will seek to obtain training for their employees. We stand on the brink of an innovation training “land rush” with few rules and little information to identify the best programs. Evaluating an innovation training program is critical. Assess programs based on their depth, the experience of the trainers, the referenced body of knowledge and the inclusion of practical examples and hands-on exercises. Ignore certifications, because no standard exists.

The Innovative Employee: Traits, Knowledge and Company Culture

How can a companies’ ability to innovate be improved?All innovation activity can be traced back to the behavior of employees. That makes the employee the center point of attention, if you want to improve your innovation ability. This article is built around the question: Which personal abilities and traits as well as organizational culture enable an employee to be innovative?

Reducing Confusion, Promoting Diffusion

In this series of three articles Paul Hobcraft explores the value of knowledge and education for innovation. Concluding the discussion, in part three the author reviews faulty innovation practice and argues in favor of recognizing innovation as a value enhancing and organizational life-changing event we need to move towards increasingly.

The Best Motivation for Innovation is ‘Being in Flow’

An important topic in Innovation Management is that of motivation. What kind of incentives can an organization provide to stimulate innovation? Bengt Järrehult argues that there is no such thing as extrinsic motivation and we should really concern ourselves with working in Flow.