Basic building block of getting things done in an organisation are the individuals/people.
Patterson (2005) argues that creativity and innovation are overlapping constructs, but the main distinction is with regard to novelty.
Whenever something new happens in the external or internal environment, the innovator sees in it the potential for uncovering new ideas; much like a landslide might reveal a new source of gold on a hillside.
Regardless of how catastrophic the change, or how adverse it may seem to the organization, it holds the potential for a renewed capability to thrive.
An innovation capability is not a change neutralizer—it’s a change maker. It’s also natural. We are all innovators by nature.
In organizations, innovation can be developed into a practice and skills that are honed by the practitioners over time.
Innovative organizations are naturally more flexible to the external environment; this allows them to react faster and more effectively to avoid risk and capture opportunities.
Science and Technology and Research and Development are important determinants of innovation and knowledge generation and need to be given greater emphasis.
Ericsson, the world’s biggest telecommunications equipment supplier, has 25,000 people around the globe working day and night on Research and Development. That number is more than half the researchers Malaysia had in 2005.
Countries with the right conditions stand a better chance of moving ahead through innovation than those countries that still hold to traditional and obsolete methods of governance.
Innovation can only happen in places where there is encouragement for new ideas.
Without the right conditions the most talented and most creative brains will migrate to places where they are able to do their best work.
Empowering employees to innovate and improve their work processes provides a sense of autonomy that boosts job satisfaction.
Empowering employees to engage in broader organization-wide innovation creates a strong sense of teamwork and community and ensures that employees are actively aware of and invested in organizational objectives and strategy.
Innovation does take a certain frame of mind that tolerates and sometimes thrives on waves of change.
We commonly hear that people resist change. People resist actions they believe will lead them into some sort of pain or discomfort.
In extreme cases, they may indeed resist any and all attempts at change. However, it bears noting that all of us really want change.
We want to make more, provide more for our families, become a better person, become healthier, and stop smoking, whatever.
We are constantly in search for changes that will make our lives better.
None of us lives a stagnant life (even the most stagnant among us is gaining weight, and that, of course, is some kind of a change).
We tend to resist anything that we believe will cause us pain or discomfort. The key is the word, believe.
It’s fairly hard to predict the future, and in many cases, equally difficult to predict whether some course of action will create pain or pleasure, least of all whether in the complicated interactions of a countless of people it is our actions alone that lead to the result.
There are some exceptions, but we learn these fairly rapidly.
We tend to believe that many changes that might be proposed in organizations will ultimately be to our detriment.
This means, simply, that we fear we will lose our position or some privilege or advantage that accrues to our position.
Innovation is a result of the people and the culture of the organisation. If people are encouraged to innovate and compensated and motivated appropriately, the culture and processes will follow.
If they are not motivated or compensated to be innovative, no amount of systems or processes will drive an innovation initiative. The people are the key to the success of innovation.
