Innovative Enterprise

date Jan 10, 2010
authors HBR Publishing
reading time 1 min
  • Book Title: Harvard Business Review on the Innovative Enterprise
  • Author: HBR Publishing
  • Year written/published: 2003
  • Book Source: Google Books, Library
  • Summary: How does/can corporations build innovative and creative cultures within their organisations?
  • Some extracts:

Time-Pressure/Creativity Matrix:

  1. High Time pressure, High likelihood of creative thinking –> On a Mission
  2. Low Time pressure, High likelihood of creative thinking –> On an Expedition
  3. High Time pressure, Low likelihood of creative thinking –> On a Treadmill
  4. Low Time pressure, Low likelihood of creative thinking –> On a Autopilot

Tough-minded ways to get innovative

  1. Start at the top
  2. allow innovation to rise
  3. Know the competitive dynamics of your business
  4. determine where innovative lives
  5. once an idea is well-developed, go for broke

the peril of organizations excessive layering…

the structures, processes and people that keep things ticking smoothly can also cut off the generation of good ideas and can block their movement through the business system. Excessive layers, for example, kills ideas before senior managers ever consider them…. barriers fencing off R&D, marketing, production and finance block up functional problems before it’s too late for effective solutions. Inspiring innovation…

16 innovation experts give their thoughts on…

  1. Make it Norm
  2. Put aside Ego
  3. Mix up people
  4. Don’t fear failure
  5. Hire outsiders
  6. Abandon the crowd
  7. Let of of your ideas
  8. Don’t underestimate science
  9. fight negativity
  10. Ask “What if?”
  11. Merge passion and patience
  12. outsmart your customers
  13. experiment like crazy
  14. Make it meaningful
  15. Stop the bickering
  16. Don’t innovate, solve problems

Research that reinvents the corporation…

  1. Research on new work practices is as important as research on new products
  2. Innovation is everywhere; the problem is learning form it
  3. research can’t just produce innovation; it must “co produce” it
  4. Research department’s ultimate innovation partner is the customer