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** Add a dynamic presentation on innovation to your annual
conference or meeting. To talk about your specific needs,
staff@thinksmart.com.
** If you want your employees to think smarter in these challenging
times, the InnovationWizard may be just what you're looking
for. For more info: staff@thinksmart.com.
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Special Note: Speak Up! Here's a simple way to register your
opinion with the White House: call 1-202-456-1111. An operator
will ask you what state you're from and then ask you for your
opinion on any subject.
Five Principles of Innovation
'If we don't change the direction we're going, we're likely
to end up where we are headed.'
-- Chinese proverb
If you're an executive or business owner, you know that Innovation
has the power to fuel growth, increase top and bottom line
revenues, and keep customers coming back for more.
Robert Tucker, a successful innovation consultant and author,
has developed a system that is designed to help companies
of all sizes achieve higher levels of growth by approaching
innovation in a fundamentally new way. His new book, Driving
Growth Through Innovation (Berrett-Koehler 27.95) offers a
synthesis of options based on what leading companies are doing
to reinvent innovation from the ground up.
After studying and working as a consultant for companies like
Citibank, EDS, Medtronic, Royal Dutch/Shell and others, Tucker
concludes that approaching innovation in new ways pays big
dividends. In fact, only companies that can consistently bring
imaginative, value-added new products, services and value
propositions to market will survive in a rapidly-changing
economy. Yet most companies today are frustrated by their
inability to turn ideas into profitable realities. Their 'innovation
process' is almost an oxymoron. In reality, it is ad hoc,
piecemeal, seat-of-the-pants and heavily reliant on happy
accidents.
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But this is decidedly not the case inside
the Innovation Vanguard companies Tucker and his team studied.
By developing methods that allow these firms to seek out unmet
customer needs, prototype ideas quickly and assess feasibility
more intelligently, they increase their batting average by
managing ideas like other assets.
Five Essential Principles of Innovation
by Robert Tucker
After researching 23 Innovation Vanguard companies, Tucker
has distilled five essential principles that organizations
must embrace to create a successful, imbedded process. They
are:
1. Innovation must be approached as a discipline. Teach people
how to think through their ideas and how to know which ones
are in alignment with the business goals. Show people how
to champion and sell their ideas.
2. Innovation must be approached comprehensively. It must
not be confined to one department or an elite group of star
performers. And it must encompass new products, services,
processes, strategies, business models, distribution channels
and markets.
3. Innovation must include an organized, systematic and continual
search for new opportunities. Innovation-adept companies,
says Tucker, promote a deeper understanding of social, demographic
and technological changes in a continual search for tomorrow's
possibilities.
4. Innovation must involve everyone in the organization. Companies
that invest in building an innovation capability devise 'idea
management' systems to capture ideas from the rank and file,
middle managers as well as senior management.
5. Innovation must be customer-centered. Learn to listen to
customers and potential customers by inviting the 'voice of
the customer' to permeate the design and development of new
ideas.
To order your copy of Tucker's book, go to:
http://www.thinksmart.com/inmembership/bookshelf
and click 'Hot Off the Press'
To learn more about Robert Tucker, visit www.innovationresource.com
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