Anatomy of Creative Leadership by Russ Schoen

Last week while in the Minneapolis airport, the cover of this month’s Harvard Business Review caught my eye with a specific title. Innovation: the Classic traps by Rosabeth Moss Kanter. This is by far the most succinct and well written article I have read on why every few years companies say they want to focus on innovation, yet continue to operate in ways that block innovation.  Here are just a sampling of the lessons she outlines from strategy, structure, process and skills. I encourage you to buy a copy of the magazine yourself or click here to buy a dowload version from HBR directly.

 A sampling of innovation lessons from her article

Strategy
Successful innovative companies use what she calls an innovation pyramid, pouring alot of investment into several top ideas, a range of promising mid-range ideas that are put into a test-state and alot of smaller seed ideas or incremental innovations that can flow up the pyramid if the idea shows promise.

Process Lessons
The controls used to measure existing businesses from planning to bugeting don’t work for promoting true innovations. In her words, "tight controls strangle innovation".

Structure Lessons
While process controls should be loosened, she advocates "tightening interpersonal connections between innovation efforts and the rest of the business."

Skills Lessons
Innovation flourishes in cultures that support, nurture and encourage collaboaration.

"Even the most technical of innovations requires strong leaders with great relationship and communication skills."

 
In summary, the people side of innovation, equipping people with a mindset and a deliberate tool-set for innovation, continues, in my opinion, to be the key differentiator between orgs that successfully innovate and those who don’t.

In case you missed it here’s the link for the article again.

It has great case studies and examples from real world businesses.