For those who work in the innovation field, life is always about change—bringing change to companies, creating change that will last, changing the way companies are creating change. Sometimes industry professionals need to change how to foster/implement innovation, and to do that, it’s important to acknowledge other innovation concepts.

Innovation has hundreds of different professionals with different ideas on the best ways to create innovation in a company. It is important that professionals listen to each other, and acknowledge the good ideas, theories or concepts. It saves time and collaboration could yield some interesting results, rather than independently coming to the same conclusions.

Looking across the innovation blogosphere, it’s amazing how many articles seem to say the same thing, giving the same advice. Authors take the time to share their experiences and opinions to help others, but often overlook similar posts by other innovation experts or only reference posts that reinforce their message. Instead, why not keep an open mind and acknowledge very different, good ideas and build upon those?

For instance, in today’s Fast Company, Deb Mills-Scofield was recognized as a business innovation maven. She has put together a system she calls “innovanomics” to analyze the success of a company’s innovation. She tries to examine the company’s strategy and innovation together using measurements of success she develops with the client, rather than traditional ROI or NPV.

http://www.fastcompany.com/1745259/deb-mills-scofield-business-innovation-maven

Innovanomics takes on a different element of innovation than the Competing Values Framework (CVF), looking the leading indicators of innovation success rather than the management process. While Mills-Scofield also has a strategy for reformatting company innovation policies, her innovanometrics for tracking/monitoring, communication, operations and people could also be used within the context CVF. Both could enhance the innovation management, one through interactions and the other through operational efficiency. The entire methodology would probably be incompatible with the CVF, but portions like the new measurements for success may be the perfect infusion for an improved innovation methodology.

Essentially innovation management is a little like cooking. It takes a lot of touch and feel, and there are many ways of making a great dinner. While having too many cooks in the kitchen (innovation concepts) could ruin a dinner, the collaboration of two different cuisines, say Greek and Italian, may lead to the Pizza Pie of innovation—fusing both styles into one delightful dish.