by Michael A. Dalton I had an interesting discussion recently with a company vice-president that asked me what he could do in terms of facilities design to make the work environment more conducive to innovation. Anyone familiar with my Theory of Constraints (TOC) based approach to innovation improvement will know that my response was to ask him if the facility was his innovation bottleneck. After getting an unsure look, I continued and asked what one thing was most constraining his organization’s new product throughput. He pondered my question for a second or two and replied, “I guess I’d have to say that it’s finding more impactful new product ideas.” That made my response simple. “Then if you want to create a better environment for innovation, get out of yours and into theirs.” He stared at me with a puzzled look for a moment then smiled. “So the internal stuff isn’t where I should focus.” Bingo – one of the most impactful things a leader can do is to keep their organization focused on high leverage activities. But internal facilities were far from his biggest problem. Of course, it’s the era of design. So I don’t mean to completely dismiss the role that the physical environment and culture can play in fostering creativity. If you’re putting up a new building, it’s probably worth considering. Having worked in situations where R&D and marketing were located in separate buildings and where they were co-located, I can say that locating them together definitely helps people interact and problem solve more easily. Similarly, I’ve worked in some cutting-edge facilities from a design and aesthetic view. Who could argue against having views that inspire, lots of open spaces, and ample team meeting areas? But for most companies, it’s really missing the point to make the R&D and office work environment the focus of your innovation improvement efforts. Instead, the important thing is to get people out of the office more often to visit customers and end users in their work environments. That’s where the actual problems exist and where the real inspiration for new products will come from! The best new products solve customers’ problems by simplifying or eliminating costly, difficult, time consuming, or unpleasant tasks. These kinds of ideas aren’t likely to come to your people while they’re in the office. These problems live out in the market. An entire discipline of ethnographic research has grown out of watching users in action to identify these problem tasks. When researchers see these problems firsthand, they get additional insights into the problem that lead to a better solution. The 3M Post-it is a great example of the how getting out of the office can help create great new product ideas. 3M Scientist, Art Fry, was a singer in his church choir and was frustrated when the little bits of paper he used to mark pages kept falling out of the hymnal. Unfortunately, he couldn’t use any of 3M’s tape products because that would have torn the pages. Fry invented Post-its when he recalled the poor adhesive one of his colleagues had accidentally cooked up and began using it to make his hymnal markers easily removable. Customer focused innovation works best when researchers can get out and see the problems firsthand. When SC Johnson researchers observed consumers problems with cleaning the shower, they invented the Scrubbing Bubbles automated shower cleaner as a way to simplify the job. Push the button on your way out of the shower and it keeps the shower clean for you. Sometimes it takes development people with a strong understanding of the technology to see the customers’ problem and at the same time envision how they can solve it. Many companies will struggle with this advice because they leave the customer interaction to sales and marketing. But limiting your R&D group to work on the ideas that others bring in is like asking them to work with part of their brain tied behind their back. Often, these companies come to me saying that they have plenty of ideas, but they just aren’t seeing the results they had hoped for out of new products. Well, it’s no wonder. Most sales and marketing people focus on selling what’s available today. Occasionally they look for opportunities to tweak or customize products. That can create new business but rarely results in high growth new products. The Simple Bottom Line: Work environment plays a role in innovation and creativity, but if your constraint is in finding better opportunities, you’ll do better to focus externally on the customers work environment. That’s where the problems are. If you can connect your development with those problems, that’s also where you’ll see the most new product impact. Don’t miss an article – Subscribe to our RSS feed and join our Continuous Innovation group! Mike Dalton is the Chief Innovation Coach for Guided Innovation Group and the author of “Simplifying Innovation” and the Simplifying Innovation Blog . Guided Innovation Group has a simple mission – helping companies turn their new product innovation into more bottom-line impact.

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What’s the Best Environment to Improve Innovation?

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by Holly G. Green I love the Olympics. I am fascinated by curling (although like most of you I can’t quite figure out the rules). I love the thrill of the downhill, the luge, the speed skating, hockey, and the snowboarding events. And I am especially enthralled when I watch the Olympic athletes visibly get clear on winning. Did you notice Lindsey Vonn at the top of the slope? Eyes closed, arms moving, legs bending as if she were already traveling down the slope in just the manner necessary to win? She was using a practice known as ’success visioning’. She was imagining the course, every twist, every turn… and how she would successfully meet the challenge of it and win the race. Olympic athletes have used success visioning for decades; since the time Roger Bannister broke the world record for running the mile in less than 4 minutes in 1954. Premier athletes the world over know the power of getting clear on winning BEFORE they get in the race. They imagine it. They get clear on what it looks like, what it feels like, and what they must do. And it works because your brain is amazingly powerful. Once you are clear on winning, your body will follow. In many ways, it can’t not follow. Your brain does not know you can’t run faster, ski quicker, make higher jumps… it only knows what you tell it and your body steps up to deliver. Winning also requires practice. Winning for an athlete means he/she is in top condition. It is likely they have practiced their race thousands of times. They are eating the right foods, taking care of themselves, and making progress almost every day towards their goal. Lindsey did not just sit around for a year, jump up, and ski her race. She got clear on goals, met them, and then set new ones. She spent her time and energy towards achieving them. She stopped doing things that got in the way. She stayed focused. Are you clear on winning in your business? Do you know what it looks like at the end of 2010 when you have been insanely successful? What are the key operating achievements you will have accomplished; what will your company culture be including in regards to the attitudes, beliefs, values, and operating principles; what skills/knowledge/abilities will exist in your organization; what organizational structures will be in place; what work processes and metrics will be used; what tools, systems and technology are necessary; what products will be in market (existing and new); what products will be in development; who will the customers be; who will the competitors be/what types of companies will you compete against; what will the brand represent? Get clear on winning, your body will follow. Is it obvious to you and everyone on your team and in your company what it will take to win a gold medal? If not, what race are you running? Don’t miss an article – Subscribe to our RSS feed and join our Continuous Innovation group! Holly is the CEO of THE HUMAN FACTOR, Inc. ( www.TheHumanFactor.biz ) and is a highly sought after and acclaimed speaker, business consultant, and author. Her unique approach to creating strategic agility, helping others go slow to go fast, will change your thinking.

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Winning the Gold Medal

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China has become the second largest industrial manufacturer in the world, says a United Nations Industrial Development Organization report.

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China 2nd, India 9th among top 10 largest industrialized economies

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by Stephen Shapiro Last night I went to a seminar. On the whiteboard, the seminar leader drew an oft-used framework: There are things you ” know .” – For example, I know I can speak English. There are things you ” know you don’t know .” – I know I can’t speak Chinese. And there are things you ” don’t know you don’t know .” – Obviously I don’t have any examples of this. But it got me thinking. There is one dimension that is never mentioned… There are things you ” don’t know you know .” Inside of organizations, there is so much untapped knowledge. To combat this, over the past two decades, companies have invested millions of dollars in knowledge management systems. The objective has been to capture the company’s knowledge. The problem is, the knowledge management databases usually become so large and unwieldy that they are unusable. I can attest from experience that these systems often end up becoming digital piles of untapped information. Finding what you want can be like finding a needle in a haystack. Or, more accurately, it is like finding a specific needle in a stack of needles. What’s the solution? You might call it, ” reverse knowledge management .” Instead of posting knowledge which sits passively in a database waiting for someone to find it, you post your question to your “community” so that it can be answered at the time of need. Of course, asking the world for an answer to your question is not new. Yahoo/Google Answers did this a few years back. But internally, especially when you have already invested in knowledge management systems, the dynamics can be quite different. If you are using an internal collaboration tool like InnoCentive@Work , you might find that reverse knowledge management is an unintended benefit. When you have a challenge you want solved, the odds are, someone else within your organization has already solved a similar problem. But you probably don’t know who knows the solution or where to find the solution. Sometimes the solution can be sitting in your knowledge management system… and you don’t even know it because it is too difficult to find. Interestingly, “requests for information” posted on internal collaboration tools are sometimes solved not by the individuals with the expertise, by rather by the knowledge management team. When a question is posted, the knowledge management team masterfully scours their databases to find a solution. The advantage of this approach is that those with expertise in navigating the knowledge management systems do what they do best, thus freeing the rest of the organization to focus on what they do best. And it has the added benefit of breathing new life into your old knowledge management initiatives. So, what is it that you organization doesn’t know what it already knows? P.S. I have to admit that I am a bit surprised. If you Google “reverse knowledge management” (in quotes) you will see that the only place this term is used on the entire internet is by me. Don’t miss an article – Subscribe to our RSS feed and join our Continuous Innovation group! Stephen Shapiro is the author of three books, a popular innovation speaker, and is the Chief Innovation Evangelist for Innocentive , the leader in Open Innovation.

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Reverse Knowledge Management

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“Companies are actually living organisms, not machines. We keep bringing in mechanics, when what we need are gardeners.” – Peter Senge by Mitch Ditkoff Sustainable innovation, the endless effort to find a better way, cannot be achieved by robotically lining up best practices and imitating them. The real catalyzing agent for renewable innovation is the ground from which these best practices spring – the confluence of purpose, people, and processes better known as culture. From where will the next wave of groundbreaking innovation come? Not from organizations mechanically mimicking each other’s best practices, but from organizations with the authentic commitment to take their stand on ground that has been cultivated for breakthrough. If you check the contents of the most popular books on innovation, the same topics show up again and again: strategy, systems, process, leadership, customer focus, risk, speed to market, prototyping, metrics, mass collaboration, market intelligence, technology, and creative thinking. Clearly, all of these topics are important. But none of them can take root in an organization without one fundamental element being in place – a consciously created culture of innovation. Is such a culture simple to create? Yes. Is it easy? No. And the reason why it is not easy is because the ground of most organizations is hard, untilled, and in major need of clearing. The metaphor that most clearly conveys the effort required is creating a garden . To experienced gardeners, the steps needed to create a garden are simple. To the inexperienced gardener, it is a tangle of complexity. Yes, gardening demands sustained and methodical effort. And yes, sweating comes with the territory. But getting a yield – something to harvest – is a fundamentally straightforward task. If your company is clear about the effort required, creating a culture of innovation (lets just call it a garden of innovation ) is simply a matter of taking the time to execute each step thoroughly 0- in the time honored way gardeners have always practiced their craft. 1. WHET THE APPETITE If you are serious about being a gardener of innovation, the first thing you will need is hunger – a real appetite for results. Growing a garden takes sustained effort. It is hard work – most of it unglamorous and unappreciated. Hunger for a yield is the serious gardener’s real motivator. Yes, the serious gardener likes being outdoors and, yes, the serious gardener likes getting exercise, but the ultimate product of his/her labors – the harvest – is what it is all about. Without this level of commitment, the gardening effort remains only a hobby and does not have the roll up your sleeves and get dirty quality so essential to reaping a result. If your workforce has no appetite for innovation, you will need to find a way to whet it. If you choose not to, people will sit idly by, waiting for R&D, senior leadership, or the tooth fairy to lead the charge. And while they may talk about growth, shovels, and the need for bulk purchase of mulch, talk will not put food on the table. Fortunately, somewhere, deep inside everyone in your organization is the impulse to create. This impulse is innate. Your task is to awaken this impulse and help people own the effort to innovate. If they do not own the effort, the only thing you will be eating at harvest time will be your own words. (P.S.: Winter is on the way.) 2. STAKE and PREPARE THE GROUND Amateur gardeners, fueled by visions of ripe tomatoes, have a tendency to plant before they are really ready. Unclear about how large a garden they can sustain, unsure about what is needed to prepare the ground, unable to resist the impulse for a quick yield, they rush in willy nilly. The result? Lots of wasted effort and the kind of sweating that signifies almost nothing. The same holds true for organizations who claim they want a culture of innovation. The antidote is a simple, two step process (though the description of the process is much simpler than the execution). First, an organization needs to get clear about the scope of the effort they want to make. It needs to stake its territory or, more precisely, define the fields in which it wants to innovate. (If it tries to innovate everywhere, all the time, it will only deplete its resources and exhaust its workforce .) Secondly, it needs to prepare the ground for planting. This task includes removing obstacles that will interfere with growth, as well as enriching the fertility of the soil. Weekend gardeners cringe at this kind of preparatory effort. It does not feel like fun and there is nothing immediately to show for it. But without this effort there will be no foundation – no ground – for future success. 3. FIND THE SEEDS You can have ample space to plant a garden. You can know exactly where that ample space is. And you can have lots of fertile soil in this ample space. But unless you have healthy seeds to plant, space is all you will ever have. If you want a garden of innovation, you need seeds. Not just one kind of seed, but many. Indeed, the more varied seeds you have, the greater your chances for an interesting yield. In the realm of innovation, ideas are the seeds. All innovation begins with an idea. Ideas are the fuzzy front end of the innovation process – the alpha and omega of new growth. No ideas, no innovation. Its that simple. The big question, then, is this: Where will your company get its new ideas? Is there an existing process? And if so, is this process working? Can you count on your workforce to deliver high quality, game changing ideas? Or is there something else you need to be doing in order to tap their brilliance? 4. PLANT THE SEEDS While it is true that some seeds, spontaneously carried by the wind and landing on fertile soil, find a way to plant themselves, most gardens require that seeds be planted in a more dependable way. If your company is sincere about its intention to create a culture of innovation, it will need to refine its seed planting process. More specifically, it will need to establish a more effective way for the carriers of seeds to increase the odds of those seeds taking root. Yes, aspiring innovators will need to become more adept at pitching/planting their ideas. But at the same time, the people to whom new ideas are being pitched will need to become more receptive to the possibility that something new is worthy of taking root. Having a silo of healthy seeds is a good start, but ultimately those seeds need to be planted – and they need to be planted in a way that will radically increase the odds of them growing into seedlings. 5. FENCE THE GARDEN If you have ever planted a garden, you have experienced the phenomenon of uninvited predators showing up at all hours to devour your tender, young seedlings. Deer, raccoons, moles, rabbits, and a host of other unidentifiable varmints seem to have no other mission in life but to downsize your dreams of winning the state fair or, at the very least, eliminate all possibility of you having fresh lettuce for dinner. It comes with the territory. And it will continue to come with the territory unless you fence your garden. Organizations of all shapes and sizes experience the same phenomenon. Promising new business growth ideas – the tasty indicators of breakthrough innovation – are routinely devoured by ravenous corporate naysayers. That is, unless the organization finds a way to protect their aspiring innovators. Your role, as a gardener of innovation, is to fence your garden and protect your people from the overly acidic scrutiny, doubt, and premature evaluation of predominantly left brained, metric driven, analytical inhibitors of innovation. It can be done. It must be done. And you are the one to champion the process. 6. TEND NEW GROWTH Conceiving a garden is relatively easy. It requires no special skills, discipline, or education. Anyone can do it. Indeed, anyone does do it every single Spring and Summer. Getting a harvest, however, is an entirely different matter. It is not so easy – and unlike conception, requires skill, discipline, resources, and the ability to learn on the job. In the same way, conceiving new ideas is relatively easy . It happens every day of the year to millions of people. Bringing them to fruition is not so easy. Along the way, they get neglected, mishandled, and trampled on. What starts out as a brilliant new possibility, often shrivels on the vine. Most organizations have no conscious process for nurturing the growth of new ideas. As a result, many powerful, new ideas never mature. They may break new ground, but they do not necessarily flower and bear fruit. The good news? It does not have to be this way. With the right kind of sustained effort, gardeners of innovation can dramatically increase the odds of exciting new ideas becoming part of the harvest and making it to market. 7. THIN and TRANSPLANT Inexperienced gardeners, intoxicated by their need for a big harvest and overcompensating for their fear of having nothing to show for their efforts, tend to plant too many seeds too close together. Their fear usually dissipates in a few weeks when the first sprouts emerge, but then another challenge surfaces – what to do with the apparent bounty of new growth? While the profusion of greenery certainly looks good to the untrained eye, the reality is different. New seedlings start competing with each other for water and nutrients. Roots entangle. Left unaddressed, the results are disappointing – row after row of stunted, scraggly plants. Savvy gardeners respond quickly, thinning out new growth to make room for a select number of the healthiest plants to flourish. Really savvy gardeners go one step further – transplanting the healthiest of the thinned out plants to new, roomier locations. Organizations trying to raise the bar for innovation face the same challenge. Intoxicated by their need for impressive growth (and wanting to involve as many employees as possible in the process), they get overwhelmed by a profusion of ideas and initiate too many projects – ideas and projects that end up competing for the same, finite resources. The result? Scraggly, stunted, and undeveloped ventures. The antidote? A clear strategy for how their organization will evaluate, select, and fund new initiatives – along with a process for identifying promising new growth to be transplanted for future development. 8. CELEBRATE THE HARVEST All cultures around the world have a holiday, ritual, or ceremony dedicated to expressing gratitude for the bounty of the harvest. In their bones, they understand the purpose, power, and privilege of giving thanks. Their recent harvest may have fed the body, but the collective acknowledgment of the harvest feeds the soul, strengthening everyones resolve to begin the growing process again the next season. Corporate cultures could learn a lesson or two from this age old practice. Historically, organizations have been severely lacking when the time comes to acknowledge the harvest and the people whose efforts were essential to manifesting that harvest. The endless demand for output drives most business leaders to conclude that acknowledging successes is a waste of time – a luxury no bottom line watching organization could afford. Somehow, deep within the collective psyche of senior leaders, lurks the fear that celebrating successes will invariably lead to a fat and lazy workforce. Nothing could be further from the truth. People flourish when their efforts are acknowledged – not only individually, but as an entire workforce. If you are serious about establishing a sustainable culture of innovation, remember to take the time to acknowledge your gardeners. For their effort. For their resilience. For their collaboration. And for whatever harvest they are able to manifest. Food for thought? Don’t miss an article – Subscribe to our RSS feed and join our Continuous Innovation group! Mitch Ditkoff is the Co-Founder and President of Idea Champions and the author of “Awake at the Wheel”, as well as the very popular Heart of Innovation blog.

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Midnight in the Garden of Innovation

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by Holly G. Green Strategic planning methodologies are like shoes – one size does not fit all. Some companies use a top-down, autocratic approach, where the plan gets created by a small group of senior managers and handed down to the rest of the organization. Some prefer a more democratic approach, with employees at all levels contributing their ideas and input to the plan. Most companies employ a hybrid of these two models. The best approach for your company depends on several factors, such as size, industry, culture, type of workforce and management style. Regardless of which approach you choose, however, every strategic plan needs five key elements in order to achieve the intended results. Mission. This defines why you exist as an organization. Specifically, it tells others (not just those in the organization) why you exist. Ideally, it describes some noble purpose that is both inspirational and aspirational, so that it instills pride in all those connected with the organization. Guiding principles. Also called organizational attributes, these describe how you expect people to behave with each other and with other stakeholder groups. Guiding principles broadly define which types of behaviors are acceptable and which behaviors will not be tolerated. In particular, they describe how you will behave when faced with difficult situations or challenges. Value propositions. These explain the value you provide to your organization’s different stakeholder groups, both internal and external. For example, why do customers buy from you? Why do employees come to work for your organization? What kind of return can shareholders expect? How does your community benefit from the work you do? Destination points. These identify where your organization wants to go within a specified time frame. This is perhaps the most critical element in the whole process because the more clearly you define your desired end state, the greater your chances of getting there. Areas of focus/strategies. These define, in a broad sense, how the organization will get to where it wants to go. They are the three to five areas everyone should be focused on to get to the destination points. What cuts across several destination points; where should the majority of energy be focused; what must everyone keep in mind as they make investments in people and other resources; and, what guides you on what to do and not to do are the core questions answered. These five elements form an essential foundation for the strategic planning process. If even one of these bedrock elements is missing, your chances for success become marginal at best. Once these elements are in place, the next step involves action planning and breakthrough modeling to determine what it will take to get to where you want to go. Here is where you get down to the nitty-gritty to figure out what organizational capabilities (systems, tools, processes, people and technologies) are needed to reach your destination points. Effective strategic planning also requires that you set goals and define team and individual accountabilities, as these link the big picture to individual goals and competencies. Ultimately, strategic planning is like a jigsaw puzzle – all the pieces must be in place in order to complete the picture. The mission and guiding principles inspire and energize employees, while creating pride and connection throughout the organization. The value propositions provide a touchstone for staying focused on what matters to stakeholders. The destination points provide clear goals and milestones that provide the big picture employees want and need. And the strategies/areas of focus create alignment and ensure that everyone in the organization is working toward the same goal. Have you got your five must-have’s in place? And is everyone clear on what they are? Don’t miss a post – Subscribe to our RSS feed and join our Continuous Innovation group! Holly is the CEO of THE HUMAN FACTOR, Inc. ( www.TheHumanFactor.biz ) and is a highly sought after and acclaimed speaker, business consultant, and author. Her unique approach to creating strategic agility, helping others go slow to go fast, will change your thinking.

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Five "Must-Haves" for a Strategic Plan

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To continue our mission to bring you the very best in innovation and marketing insights, and make them even more accessible for the greater good , it’s time I brought in some help. Believe it or not I do have a day job . Don’t worry, we’re not going to do a pledge drive, and don’t worry we are also going to remain completely neutral and independent. We are currently running a sealed-bid auction for sponsorship of our header for March 2010. This auction ends at midnight GMT February 28, 2010 and already has a few bidders. If your organization would like to help Blogging Innovation continue to be a great lightning rod for innovation and marketing insights, please contact us to bid in the March auction or to register your interest for a future month. We’ll be using the sponsorship income to invest in: Someone who is incredibly passionate and knowledgeable part-time to administer the site and help make it more visible to people Someone to create a new site design that will make the insights even more accessible Keep up with the conversation by rss feed or by joining our LinkedIn group or Facebook page Braden Kelley is the editor of Blogging Innovation and founder of Business Strategy Innovation , a consultancy focusing on innovation and marketing strategy. Braden is also @innovate on Twitter.

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Blogging Innovation Adopting Monthly Sponsors

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by Jeffrey Phillips I had a rather disconcerting part in a recent discussion with some senior leaders and executives who were discussing innovation. It was interesting to hear from some of them that they believe “innovation” is a fad, and will run its course shortly. They believe that innovation is simply another “quick fix” elixir cooked up by management consultants to find new things to sell to senior executives. Some others in the discussion believed that innovation is more systemic, and will have a longer shelf life, and add value for many years to come. I found myself disagreeing with both schools of thought. The cynics suggest that innovation is simply a buzz word for creating new products or services, something that many firms already do. In that regard they view innovation as the current flash in the pan, meant to distract everyone from the real problems and place a nice bow on a box that already exists. To these cynics I say – you couldn’t be more wrong. In a market that is moving and changing as quickly as the one we are experiencing now, and an environment where consumers are demanding more, and better, products and services, and in a production environment where any new idea can be copied fairly quickly, the only real winners are those who create substantially new concepts on a consistent basis. The old, static product lives and days of lower competition are over. Innovation isn’t a “nice to have” or a “flash in the pan”, it is rapidly becoming the most important skill set your organization can acquire. For those who believe innovation does add value and can be more systemic, I say they are right, but only partly so. They see innovation as a tool that can be used, until the next tool comes along. This follows the theory of “waves”. There was the “wave” of quality improvement, followed by the “wave” of rightsizing and outsourcing. Now, these folks believe, is the time for the “wave” of innovation, which will run its course and introduce a new wave of something else yet unseen. The problem with considering innovation as a wave with a specific time horizon is that new products and services will continue to be important long after the expected time frame of the “wave” is complete. If your investment is to simply adopt innovation as the next tool down the pike, and expect to jettison it once the wave is over, your team won’t commit the necessary resources to innovate effectively. It will be a sideline to the “real work” of the organization, eagerly awaiting the next wave or fad. No, here’s where I diverge from the discussion. We are in a fundamental environmental shift. The pace of change and the increase in global competition means that the way we work has to change. Innovation isn’t an interesting sideshow or fad, unless your management team allows it to be. Innovation isn’t a wave or trend for the next “x” years to be replaced by something else. Innovation is THE differentiator between firms that are thriving and healthy today, and those that will be thriving and healthy a decade from now, because innovation isn’t a fad, and isn’t a wave, but is going to become a permanent way of life, a sustaining capability for the firms that understand the shift underway and adopt innovation as a cultural imperative. If you think this doesn’t matter then simply consider the culture and environment of the organization where you’d most like to work. Do you want to work in a firm that places emphasis on the future and staying abreast of trends and new ideas, or do you want to work in a firm where the constant activity is reacting to what other firms do in the market? The most innovative firms will attract the best people and accelerate their capabilities, becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. The firms with less innovation skill will atrophy because they can’t compete on new ideas, and they can’t generate new products and services fast enough to retain customers. What’s it going to take for us to wake up and realize that innovation is the most important skill we can gain within most organizations? I recognize that this kind of change threatens the status quo, but if we ignore the shifts underway in the market and economy we risk a future with far fewer jobs and far fewer opportunities. Don’t miss a post – Subscribe to our RSS feed and join our Continuous Innovation group! Jeffrey Phillips is a senior leader at OVO Innovation . OVO works with large distributed organizations to build innovation teams, processes and capabilities. Jeffrey is the author of “Make us more Innovative”, and innovateonpurpose.blogspot.com .

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Is Innovation a Fad?

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Join the folks at BlackBerry and me for another webinar, designed to help small businesses like ours tackle some of the business challenges we’re faced with today.  It’s called, “ Moving Your Business Forward Even When the Economy Won’t Cooperate .” In this FREE webinar, we’ll cover: Sales strategies that work to get customers to loosen their purse strings Smart ways to keep expenses down – without holding back your future opportunities Advice for managing a positive state of mind so you can lead your organization to new heights Dealing with employee compensation even when your finances are limited How to jump on new trends and opportunities, such as the coming mobile growth This session is for small business leaders, including business owners, managers, consultants and service providers to small businesses. Presenter: Anita Campbell , CEO and Editor-in-Chief of Small Business Trends (that’s me!).  I will be joined by Andy Birol, Profitable Growth expert . What: FREE webinar – Moving Your Business Forward Even When the Economy Won’t Cooperate When: February 25, 2010, at 1:00PM EST (10:00AM PST) Where: In the comfort of your home or office with your computer. Join us live! (The archived event will be available afterwards.) Register:  Go here to register Hashtag for Twitter discussion: #SMBMobility From Small Business Trends Free Webinar: Economy Not Cooperating? Move Your Business Forward Now

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Free Webinar: Economy Not Cooperating? Move Your Business Forward Now

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One of the common themes of the speakers at the recent CoDev Open Innovation Conference was the importance of developing exceptional communication skills. In the age of open innovation, when partnering with firms outside of your organization in the pursuit of great ideas will become the norm, cultivating this capability will be essential to your success. Let’s take a closer look at the specific skills that will be needed.

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The importance of communication in open innovation

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