| Positioning Innovation Whilst every organisation will agree with the importance of innovation the styles and mechanisms of innovation will be very different. Some organisation, pioneers in technology, will have an intensive product focus for their innovation; other organisations, specialising in customer service, seek innovation in design and visceral customer experience. Traditional business theorists provide a categorisation of company styles, such as customer intimate or operational excellence. However these models do not, normally, extend to the different innovation styles. And in innovation the management disciplines required for operational excellence will prevent product innovation, and jeopardise the organisation’s future success. In managing innovation often good management disciplines ‘go bad’. The opening session will introduce the different practices of innovation, and the managerial styles and competence necessary for success. Workshop: Innovation Honesty When asked many companies and CEOs will proudly boast of their innovation record but in reality performance is very different from their stated capabilities. Anyone experienced in innovation will recognise the bias and blinding of success – to quote the old adage “success has many cousins and failure has nothing but orphans”. Successful innovation often results from an exquisite mix of opportunities, personalities and environment, in hindsight this mix is all too often portrayed by consultants and outsiders as just one or two simple factors. In diagnosing and developing innovation in an organisation the starting point is an honest conversation of all concerned. However the conversation takes us along the knife edge of honesty – with the dangers of myth making egos on the one side and destructive cynicism on the other. At the UGM we will employ a technique to ‘trick’ participants into first telling the truth and using this to build success rules that make sure that the approach to innovation works. When we try to capture the knowledge in people’s heads, the trend to take a direct route to what we think is going to be useful. An alternative approach is to use groups, provocation and reversal thinking to build engagement and to capture the tactical “gems” and organisational reality that is known to some individuals yet rarely articulated in interview.
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