Agile Innovation: The Revolutionary Approach to Accelerate Success, Inspire Engagement, and Ignite Creativity

10 Cultivating Core Creativity

Innovation is different from many other business management concerns in one important way: It requires processes, structures, and resources to manage significant levels of creativity (developing new concepts and ways of doing things) while executing (transforming creative concepts into commercial realities.

—Tony Davila, Marc J. Epstein, and Robert Shelton¹

As we discussed in the previous chapter, your passions are integral to who you are, and they must find expression in your work. To achieve the highest levels of success at innovation, a specific set of skills is also very helpful, including the abilities we've discussed in previous chapters, such as the ability to see and listen deeply, to unlock your own creativity and that of others, and to create and tell great stories.

Developing these skills throughout your organization will nurture the vital ability to envision and create the future and enhance your capacity to fulfill the vision that drives your organization forward.

Seeing More Deeply

The drive to innovate comes from the hope for, search for, and discovery of a better way, which stems from an implicit (or explicit) dissatisfaction with the way things are now. Sometimes that awareness comes spontaneously because of dissatisfaction with an unpleasant experience. At other times it can happen when we specifically hunt for new opportunities. ...