Leading Innovation in Times of Change

Then Innovators Digest has this extract article this month:
Create Market Place Disruption: 12 Questions to Get Started
Here are the 12 questions:
“1. What are the biggest obstacles to innovation in your organization?
2. Why do projects identified in brainstorming or ideation sessions seem to never get off the back burner?
3. Why is there so much funding for legacy work, but so little funding for innovation?
4. When you know you have to do something new, why does it seem like your organization keeps doing what it always did – knowing full well results won’t improve?
5. What metrics need to change in order to create focus on innovation?
6. Why do managers pay lip service to innovation, but never give innovation projects more time and attention?
7. Why don’t customer interviews produce more innovation?
8. Why do we get surprised by competitors that introduce new solutions in our core business?
9. What should happen to give you more time to create innovative solutions in your business?
10.Who should be responsible for implementing innovation?
11. How does the budgeting process accommodate innovation projects?
12. Are “disciplined” or “focused” organizations better, or worse, at implementing innovation?”
I’ve always loved the quote that I paraphrase as:
“In times of turbulent change, most organizations tend to be overmanaged and underlead.”
You lead your way out of a technology threats, recessions, demographic change, whatever.
It’s just illogical to strive for past, nostalgic stability when changing times are obvious to most sentient individuals. We can only control our own and our organization’s reactions to these changes by innovating and adapting. Like my old boss favoured saying, “The dinosaurs didn’t go extinct because the climate changed, they just didn’t adapt, fast enough.”
Be mammals. Style your hair, get out there and bear live young ideas.
Stephen