Everyone wants to make innovation an everyday, everywhere capability of their company. But, just about everyone, and leaders especially, don’t know how innovation really works or how to actually support innovation.
I’ve worked with some of the biggest, and most dynamic companies in the world to build the innovation process into their businesses. Below, I’m pleased to share my five truths about innovation that most of us get wrong–and how to get them right.
If you really want to innovate, you need to make it a deliberate part of your process. You can’t start at the moment innovation happens, but you can create an environment of constructive conflict where risks are taken, and efforts are honestly evaluated. If you deliberately allow room for innovation in your process, you’ll get results and grow. If you don’t, you’ll just be one of the many who wants innovation but can never seem to get it.
Jeff DeGraff is the Dean of Innovation – an author, speaker, and advisor to Fortune 500 companies and mission-driven organizations worldwide. He’s the CEO and Founder of Innovatrium, Founder of Intellectual Edge Alliance, and Clinical Professor of Management and Organizations at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. Jeff co-created the Competing Values Framework and developed the Innovation Code and Innovation Genome methodologies which provide organizations with practical tools to reconcile competing priorities and drive breakthrough performance. His mission is the democratization of innovation: making systematic innovation accessible to everyone, everywhere, every day.