Change, Innovate, Evolve, Thrive

With the business ecosystem changing ever so rapidly, if a company is not continually moving forward, it too will become a dead stock. Organisations need to look at moving on or reinventing themselves from time to time.

The crux of a company’s proactive efforts to stay in front of the change curve, and its response to the inevitable change that comes, is largely a result of the company’s culture of innovation. The companies that visibly are doing well, even during the downturn that we are just coming out of, are the ones that presented innovative ideas, products, services and/or experiences to their customers. I can’t think of getting a chance of earning easy money anymore!

December’s Harvard Business Review published a survey study covering more than 3,000 executives and 500 innovative entrepreneurs which identified the five skills that enable the best innovators to soar above everyone else. The article posits that what innovators have in common is their ability to actively observe the world around them and put ideas and information together in unique combinations. This ability to connect disparate qualitative and quantitative input is the key to innovators’ ability to think outside the box and develop the paradigm changing innovation we have seen in the technology and services spaces.

Here are the five skills that the study says drives innovation. How many of them are actively encouraged as part of your company’s culture?

• Associating: The ability to connect seemingly unrelated questions, problems or ideas from different fields.
• Questioning: Innovators constantly ask questions that challenge the common wisdom. They ask “why?”, “why not?” and “what if?”
• Observing: Discovery-driven executives scrutinize common phenomena, particularly the behavior of potential customers.
• Experimenting: Innovative entrepreneurs actively try out new ideas by creating prototypes and launching pilots.
• Networking: Innovators go out of their way to meet people with different ideas and perspectives.

What are the consequences of failing to innovate and adapt to changes in the ecosystem we operate in?

In consulting services, the innovation and resulting evolution needs to occur in quarters, months if required, certainly not years, to ensure survival. Without the innovations, a company ceases to move forward, or ceases to evolve as its ecosystem evolves, and it gets plucked off of its perch by hungry competitors.

Do we have a choice? I think I’ll take another look at those five skills that drive innovation again.

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