The Innovation Formula

WHAT NOW?

This book examined the 14 biggest drivers of an innovation culture. Focusing on 14 different elements all at once can seem like a mammoth task! So rather than trying to do it all straight away, I recommend that you revisit your results from the Innovation Culture Audit that you completed at the start of the book. Identify your three lowest-scoring areas as the starting point. Focusing on three of the 14 areas is a manageable amount of work to start with, and you can easily get to the other variables later on.

Once you have your three priority areas, it's worth going back over some of the real-life examples of how other organisations are bringing those variables to life. At Inventium we have a motto about good ideas. We say ‘steal with respect'. By this, we don't mean shoplift or steal someone's IP without formally acknowledging them. What we do mean is that if another company has come up with a great way of encouraging risk-taking, for example, then feel free to adapt what they have done to your own context rather than feeling like you have to reinvent the wheel.

For example, if risk-taking is an area in which your organisation scores low, as we find many do, you might want to adopt the Tata Group's idea and have your own Dare to Try awards to recognise innovations that didn't quite hit the mark commercially but did contain some great learnings for your company (see chapter 11). If resourcing is an issue for your organisation, why not take Adobe's Kickbox idea and ...