MOTIVATE Your Inner Innovator: Kickstarting Growth in a Stale Economy

Many organizations have enjoyed continuous growth despite the challenges of the current economy. The problem is, the genesis of their organizational growth has been driven by entrepreneurship — and this entrepreneurship, unfortunately, has turned to bureaucracy, risk management and generally an internal focus.

This is a normal part of the organizational growth cycle. Insightful companies realize that they must manage risk by transitioning their old entrepreneurial culture into the new “intrapreneur culture.”

Here are the three key tenets that drive a growth culture and take your organization to its next level of hyper-growth.

The Magnetic Culture

It is said that nothing succeeds like success. To that, I would suggest that nothing innovates like innovation. Creating a culture that encourages an intrapreneur approach towards driving innovation and ultimately customer value is critical. Not only will this provide a way to drive new product innovation, it will also help you attract and keep the most motivated and innovative team.

Many companies stall by creating too much structure around their innovators, resulting in the creation of cultural anti-bodies that spit out your best talent. Ignite innovation by providing an open innovative culture that focuses on delivering the best customer value.

Igniting Innovation

As organizations transition through corporate growth cycles they often abandon the foundation of their success. Typically, that success lives in their ability to keenly connect to their customers’ needs, problems and opportunities. Most companies’ original foundational success was often also driven by the ability to quickly make decisions and transfer new ideas into a layered and dynamic customer value.

You must get back to the entrepreneurial roots that got you here in the first place. Studies have shown that companies can ignite innovation by hiring the best people, incentivizing them and giving them the freedom to move innovation forward quickly.

Use the power of enterprise solutions that encourage collaboration and engagement. You can use free solutions such as yammer to develop innovative communities within your enterprise that promote customer-centered and innovation and stakeholder collaboration. You can also use innovation management systems such as Spigit that leverage game mechanics to encourage, motivate and engage your best talent.

The Growth Platform

It amazes me how few organizations have developed growth platforms. A growth platform is a comprehensive plan that addresses all the key issues of your success including: how to attract and keep the best talent, the development of an innovation trajectory plan, innovation cross-pollination, incremental and breakthrough innovation.

Your growth will be based on your ability to manage the polarity of both product line extension and new breakthrough innovations. At the risk of using a worn-out axiom “failing to plan is planning to fail.”

My final word of advice: “put aces in places.” Bring in the best experts and higher and motivate the best team.

This topic and more are included in the Vistage Connect™ peer advisory sessions. Learn more.

Nicholas J. Webb is a Partner at Lassen Innovation, an innovation and business growth-consulting firm. He is also the author of The Innovation Playbook and The Digital Innovation Playbook. Visit his website at www.nickwebb.com.

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