In today's world, there is perhaps not a bigger buzzword in Corporate circles that Innovation. And with the influence Corporates have on Nations' economies, it's but natural that Governments wanting to be seen as investment-friendly, have caught on.
It is all very good: necessary to ensure scarce resources are put to good use. Because everything is derived from nature. And the more resources we consume, the more in harm's way we put future generations. Human capital is the one of the costliest resources for companies, and like it or not, means to improve productivity and lower costs will always be attractive so long as they have a positive effect on the balance sheet.
Few and far-between cries for Compassionate-Capitalism notwithstanding, it's destined for now to on-paper displays of Corporate Citizenship or self-driven attempts by a handful of corporates. This, in a world-culture where individuals and Corporates alike are always on the lookout for loopholes to lessen tax contribution, I don't think it'll amount to much. It is only when the effects of such taxes and benefits of Corporate Citizenship are shown, will there be more such self-driven and client-demanded contributions by Corporates.
Be it reducing waste, improving productivity, or ideas to ensure there is more willful contribution to taxes or acceptance of compassionate-capitalism, it all still boils down to Innovation! And Innovation is not a Eureka moment; that's the biggest misconception. It is a disciplined process, which will be a mix of Brainstorming, Reusing models that has worked at other places, simplifying to just one basic must-have skill - Listening. In order to foster Innovation as a discipline and culture, Managers all-over have to keep reminding themselves to have patience, and listen. Indeed, time is scarce, and it'd augur well for leadership to carve out time for Line-managers to invest in Innovation. Google has led the way here, allowing 20% of voluntary time towards such projects. The problem there being, it's isolated and not process-driven. Innovation has to be process-driven to show results, just as other Quality control systems have had to. Creativity is one aspect and contributor to Innovation, but certainly not the Driver. This has to be recognized by leadership. The biggest mistake corporates are making today is demanding Innovation with no resources provided, be it time or expertise.
There must be SWAT teams created who go about training and mentoring projects and teams on Innovation practices and improvements that can be implemented. Increasing resources in terms of staffing and time is the first help leadership has to provide. Incentivising is also bound to help. Something like how Agile has grown with patterned Best-Practices and Certifications, Innovation also needs to be a study in itself.
But like any growing field, winning over the team is a must. Nurturing and being supportive is most important. Results will come over time, and there is no baseline to measure against, admit it! And quit putting unrealistic pressure. And the Biggest Mistake one can make is to simply reject bad ideas (even if genuinely so). Every idea needs to be discussed. Who knows, our minds have not thought through where the person was going with the idea. Also when discussed as to why and idea won't work, you might get corollaries or options that when used to slightly tweak the original (bad) idea, would make it a masterpiece! Imagine the kick the original ideator and the rest of the contributors feel when this happens!! If handled differently though, it could lead to growing resentment, lack of motivation and esteem, feeling of rejection and disenchantment by the individual and over time the team as a whole to the entire Innovation process!
We have a long way to go..
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