Learn to innovate from your kids (page 2 of 2)

"Building an innovation network," Saporito says, "requires three elements; sensing, accessing and melding."

Sensing. Intelligent Innovators have well developed sensing capabilities, seeking relevant knowledge and skills on a global scale and study development in adjacent areas. By performing research, they leverage a variety of sensing channels including vendors, associations, conferences, literature and the internet, and control creativity, technical expertise, local knowledge, and relationships of many employees in their own organizations.

Accessing. They determine the best way to access critical knowledge and skills through an external partnership or an owned facility, based on careful trade-offs between the value of the knowledge and the cost to access it. These partnerships are often a cost effective channel and prompt companies to open up to the outside world.

Melding. Intelligent Innovators meld partners into a seamlessly managed innovation network, which harmonizes structures and processes, facilitating collaboration. This demonstrates management commitment and offers incentives to foster real collaboration.

Look into the future

"Scenario planning should be used to creatively identify tomorrow's market opportunities and risks, and drive innovation," said Saporito. "Scenario planning can be used to synthesize sensing data and focus additional research into plausible visions of the future." The process to gain future foresight is based on three simple steps.

Gather Information with a focus on trends relevant to the business. Involve business units and research resources and harness the sensing network.

Synthesize information by using proven methods like war gaming or scenario planning to synthesize information into trends, which can be used for developing evolutionary roadmaps.

Share the information by deducing strategic and tactical implications of likely scenarios with senior management and share the information throughout the organization,. In this way, intelligent innovators will create buy-in around the innovation, boosting return on innovation investment.

Organize innovation

52% of respondents in the Booz survey felt they lacked an innovation culture - even though it was considered the fourth most important improvement for their organization.

Innovation potential must be unlocked. Intelligent innovators therefore embed intelligent innovation principles into their organizations' DNA. OrgDNA thinking, pioneered by Booz & Company, highlights four aspects of an effective organization - decision rights, information, motivation and structure.

"Intelligent innovators empower cross-functional innovation teams to make decisions and have clearly defined decision making authority and responsibilities. They also make information available in an effective way, so innovation strategy is understood throughout the company with innovation metrics and accountability for performance transparently shared,"

said Saporito.

The other two aspects, the study finds, are motivation and structure. Motivation is achieved by the clear commitment of senior management with risk-taking, dissent and creativity encouraged and rewarded. Employees are free to spend a portion of their time on new ideas with resources made available for exploring these.

Intelligent innovators should leverage a lean but empowered Innovation Management group inside their organizations, which coordinate the innovation efforts throughout the company. Rotation is encouraged as part of a career 'fast track', providing broad exposure to all functions.

Conclusion

The UAE ranks as the 14th most innovative country in the world, according to the World Business / INSEAD Global Innovation Index 2007. The rapid development of Dubai exemplifies the city's innovativeness, but also highlights the continuous need for fueling innovation in the region.

The UAE is well positioned to make it to the first place of the Global Innovation Index. The family friendly country and rich cultural environment are assets few countries can leverage to apply this new approach of intelligent innovation. His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum's $10bn donation for research and education means the time is right for leaders in the region to better understand how to establish the right mechanisms between learning and innovation.