INNOVATION SPECIAL .....Innovation: A CRITICAL ABILITY

Innovation: A CRITICAL  ABILITY   NO IDEA IS A WASTE OF TIME, BUT THE GREATEST ENEMY OF A GREAT IDEA IS FLAWED EXECUTION For the nature and scale of innovations that are required today, it is imperative that innovation is more than just an initiativeled exercise and the single biggest differentiator is to foster innovation as a key cultural tenet. This requires the companies to demonstrate some core values and drive key behaviours which are germinal to the innovation process. Risk taking and tolerance to failure: Innovation requires a level of risk-taking and failure that's impossible without creating a safe environment for employees to experiment and innovate. This necessitates that the agenda is driven by the highest echelons of the corporate ladder and is differentially recognised and rewarded. Collaboration and leveraging resident knowledge: “Chance favours the connected mind,“ said Steven Johnson. It is critical that the organisation leverages resident knowledge beyond just innovation teams to collaborate and create a knowledge management system that makes possible the extraction of insights from across the organisation and outside it. Leveraging technology to do that is a key requisite. Tapping into past learnings and future trends makes thinking outside the box much easier. Leverage the power of big and small: No idea is a waste of time. Small successful innovations go a long way in instilling faith and paving the way for the ability to take bigger risks. Renovations are as power ful and important as innovation and not all innovation has to be radical. The ability to celebrate small wins and setbacks is as important as big successes. Encourage positive challenges: It is critical to create a culture of encouraging apositive questioning and allowing space for healthy debate and constructive conflict. This can be further enhanced by encouraging participation of non-subject matter experts or diverse resources to allow for positive dissent and provocation. Speed of execution: The greatest enemy of a great idea is flawed execution. In the fast-paced changing environment today, the shelf life of ideas is getting shorter by the day. The relevance and the impact of the idea is greatly determined by the speed at which it is executed and the effectiveness of the execution. This is critical from the point of view of beating the change cycle. Savitha Shivsankar -The author is associate director, HR, Mondelez India Foods Pvt Ltd

ET3NOV15