Innovation needs to be the collective habit of the business, you have to live it and breathe it every day, otherwise, you don’t feel accomplished.
In the rapidly evolving businesses and dynamic economic systems, innovations are very complex but critical for firms' survival and thriving today. Some businesses try to force innovation via “command & control” management style, but it often does not work well. Because the business and economic environment play an important role, there are both tangible and intangible elements which need to be knitted into the unique innovation competency of the organization. Knowledge is important, but openness is more critical to spark innovation. Here is the “five-step” openness in innovation management.
Listening: Innovation happens at the intersection of people and organization. The goal of innovation is usually either for solving customers’ problems creatively or improving the business performance innovatively. Thus, communication is key to the success of innovation management. Organizations are social realities that emerge from the communication patterns of people. In business reality, often communication problems are rampant in the business world. Innovation leaders need to involve customers and different stakeholders, encourage people to speak, actively listening to what they say, collect their feedback, engage them in both idea creation and implementation processes. To truly understand people’s concerns and solve their problem creatively, it’s important to listen attentively, explore information selectively to find the special clue about the critical issues, see things through different angles, discover the potential answers or solutions, all of which can open your mind and make communication invaluable for ultimate innovation success.
Mirroring: Mirroring is about developing the reciprocal relationship to gain mutual trust. It’s about enforcing understanding, asking open-ended questions, and initiating thought-provoking conversations. Traditional managers are used to telling rather than asking. But for spurring creativity and catalyzing innovation, asking open-questions is great to evoke responses, keep conversation flow, enlighten or illustrate specific issues or topics to stimulate out-of-the-box thinking or generate great ideas. Communication is the coordination mechanism that makes organizations possible and makes a group of people as a cohesive team to generate fresh ideas, continually innovate and improve to achieve more. Many companies leverage digital platforms or collaboration tools to develop innovation clusters or hubs cross physical boundaries for enabling people exchanging ideas, brainstorming solutions to tough problems, enforcing the culture of learning, and building trust to enforce innovation.
Validating: There are two sides of managing ideas. On one hand, you need to improve idea flow; it is important to build an environment that is conducive to communication and collaboration to ensure there are abundant ideas flow; on the other hand, actually, the real challenge to innovation management is how to accelerate idea validation and streamline innovation management processes. Keep an open mind but take a scientific approach for idea validation. Because organizations have limited resources and time; before the ideation, companies need to discover insights; after ideation, it’s important to filter, prototype, and validate those ideas. The results of those ideas depend on the ability of the company to set the right priority, select the best ideas based on both the strategic business goals and capacities, develop and implement them, to maximize the business value.
Empathizing: Empathy is a fundamental component of the design for developing intuitive products or services. It’s about taking other’s position and understand the problems you intend to solve from their angles. For customer-centric innovation, always evolve customers in innovation management scenario, be open about their thoughts or opinions, put customers’ shoes on to gain customer empathy. From an innovation management perspective, design, empathy, and humanities are interconnected, develop empathic relationship and spirit among customer experience design team members; make people feel involved in the design and implementation scenario, show the customer that you are making a significant innovation investment and put great amount of effort to deliver intuitive products, services, or solutions which more closely meet their needs.
Digital innovation has an expanded scope and it is benefiting the widest audience of the digital ecosystem. The open atmosphere is critical for the success of innovation management. Digital leaders today can harness innovation by practicing open leadership styles, enforcing communication & collaboration, and facilitating joyful teamwork. Innovation needs to be the collective habit of the business, you have to live it and breathe it every day, otherwise, you don’t feel accomplished.
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