Forward-thinking and creativity is at the core of the educational structure at The New School. We are encouraged to explore a more human-centered approach to problem solving in combination with design thinking to address complex issues.
So how can you translate what you have learned in the classroom into a valuable skill that is applicable to the work place?
How do you define innovation? The company 3M, one of the first organizations to fully embrace innovation as the essence of its corporate brand, defines it as “new ideas – plus action or implementation – which result in an improvement, a gain, or a profit.”
Good definition, but it needs another element. People.
Innovation is people using their imagination, experience, curiosity, instincts and relationships to develop and implement ideas that create value. Innovation is the fuel of our future — new products, new services, new markets. But it isn’t just the “next big thing.” It’s also a million small things. Innovation is about people working within a philosophy of continuous improvement and change.
If you are looking to spark this kind of innovation, here are 5 tips to keep in mind:
1) Innovation is everyone’s job. Whether you lead a team, a group, or an organization, you’ve got to involve and rely on others. Isolating “a creative few” as the sole visionaries in the organization simply won’t cut it anymore. Thirty years ago, by the time an idea got to the CEO, it had been sifted through multiple layers of management. Now, savvy leaders encourage e-mails, phone calls — anything to hear directly from people on the plant floor or on the front lines of customer service to get their opinions and suggestions.
2) The heart of innovation is trial and error. While many say they do, too few organizations truly encourage failure. I have, however, known hundreds of individual leaders (at all levels and from a cross-section of industries) who created environments for their departments or teams where failure was acceptable. Where it became a learning experience, and not something to be punished. These leaders shared their own failures and made it safe for others to do the same.
3) Tell stories that show how mistakes can become successes. One such story: For years Charles Goodyearlabored to find a way to make rubber commercially useful. Then one day Goodyear accidentally spilled a mixture of rubber and sulfur he was holding on a hot stove. The chemical reaction of heat applied to this mixture resulted in the discovery of the vulcanization process used to manufacture rubber tires. And with that “mistake,” an industry was born.
4) Help stamp out the Not Invented Here (NIH) mindset. An example of generating motivation to break that mindset came from General Electric in the days when Jack Welch was in charge. Welch made it clear that the sharing of good ideas across the organization was a high management priority. This posed a challenge for GE managers because of the size and diversity of the company. If you did have a good idea, how could you identify the people in other businesses who might benefit from it? The Chief Learning Officer at GE came up with a simple solution. He created a “hot line” to be manned by his team. This operated similar to a dating service – only instead of matching people to potential mates, it matched good ideas with business units that could put them to use.
5) Broaden your definition of innovation. Move the concept of innovation beyond new products and services to include strategic innovations – new ideas about mission, values, and goals; administrative innovation – changes in internal systems; field level innovation – solutions from those closest to the customer on ways to better serve those customers; and job-related incremental change that encompasses everyonein every position finding ways to do things differently and ways to do things better.
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