Innovativeness

By manifesting innovation from an individual endeavor to a team activity and a collective effort, the horizon of collaborative innovation is expanded and the effect of innovation is magnified.

In face of frequent disruptions and fierce competition, innovativeness becomes significantly important in the digital era with the advanced technologies because the future of work or running business will not be mere automatons, but continue to discover, differentiate, innovate, and be disciplined to accelerate collective performance.

Being innovative is not only a state of mind, but also an ability to identify patterns, make unusual connections, with capacity to build unique competency and solve problems unconventionally.

Unconventional understanding and true wisdom lead to putting more thoughts into problem-solving: Intellectual curiosity is one of the key ingredients to spark innovation via unconventional connections. Always be careful about examining the hidden patterns, the potential points of engagement. It takes courage and mental toughness to break through conventional wisdom. It takes persistence and determination to practice unconventional thinking. Being innovative requires you to keep your eyes open and keep your mind off the box, break down the conventional box and seek out new patterns wherever you can discover them actively .

People with an “unconventional mindset” and learning agility have the willingness and ability to gain an unconventional understanding of issues, show versatility and flexibility in response to unpredictable or unanticipated circumstances. In retrospective problem-solving, you have to be determined to get better results somehow and it will help to try unconventional thinking, practices, develop multidimensional (including introspection) competencies to formulate unconventional alternatives.

For innovative problem-solving, seeking unconventional wisdom, seeking information on the minutiae of every facet of each change constantly: Virtually all real economic growth or societal progress is driven by some sorts of unconventional understanding of issues in the world. Information is usually the very clue to unpuzzle innovation. However, the critical information which we so often miss, though, is in the gaps. It’s important to leverage quality information, broaden perspectives, develop multi-dimensional competencies to formulate unconventional solutions to complex global problems consistently.

Global problem-solving capabilities evolve and move from the fundamental level to differentiated levels between categories based on the technology evolution or business driver. Being unconventional does not mean being foolish, neither being conventional means one is wise. With being called conventional wisdom, keep expecting innovation out of mediocrity is not realistic. Creativity is about thinking beyond conventional wisdom. Innovators obviously think differently, challenge automatic assumptions that something needs 'fixing,’ seeing things from different angles and shaping unconventional understanding of the issues in order to come up with alternative solutions.

The advanced innovation journey gets to the inflection point when you not only absorb knowledge, but also criticize old knowledge, co-create new knowledge, build innovation competency: We are on the advancing journey when we move from information scarcity to knowledge economy to creativity economy. Innovation becomes increasingly complex in nature, predicting and preparing the next level of innovation is an iterative learning and doing continuum. Innovation is often the team work, not an individual’s effort nowadays. Everyone perhaps has some blind spots in blocking the way to unlock their potential; it’s important to build a competitive team with cognitive difference and complementary expertise, in shaping unconventional understanding of the issues to improve collective innovation competency.

An enriched innovation ecosystem enables systematic innovation management. Global innovators show versatility, learning agility, and flexibility in response to unpredictable or unanticipated circumstances, demonstrate integrity, and build a professional brand. Innovative leaders are able to connect unusual dots, motivate people to learn, share, create fresh knowledge, improve corporate learning maturity and organizational innovation competencies.

Innovation is not an overnight phenomenon, but an adventurous journey to overcome challenges, transform great ideas to achieve commercial value. By manifesting innovation from an individual endeavor to a team activity and a collective effort, the horizon of collaborative innovation is expanded and the effect of innovation is magnified.

Posted in: Creativity,Innovation