Becoming innovative: some first steps Can your company become more innovative? Yes But there is no short-term fix.

Becoming innovative: some first steps Can your company become more innovative? Yes! But there is no short- term fix.

First, you need to need to know exactly where you are at this point in time with regard to innovation. The greatest error an organisation can make in this process is to make assumptions rather than getting facts.

Second, you need to consider how your level of innovation compares with your competitors . It may be impossible for you to find out exactly what your competition is doing in terms of innovation, but you may be able to determine how you rate compared to others in your industry sector. Depending upon the size and complexity of your organisation, you may wish to enlist professional assistance with the process (see ˜For further exploration for this chapter).

Step 1: diagnostic analysis

A good starting place to deal with the two issues discussed above is a diagnostic analysis of the organisation. This will help you to ascertain what is being done well and what shortcomings exist. Such an analysis would investigate the following issues:

1. Does the organisation have an innovative culture?

2. What role does senior management play in driving (or constraining) innovation?

3. How much innovation actually occurs?

4. Does the organisation innovate in an ad hoc nature or is there a systematic approach?

5. Does the organisation understand the difference between enterprise innovation and technological innovation?

6. Does the organisation exhibit innovation at strategic, tactical and operational levels?

7. Is innovation considered a key outcome from the strategic planning process?

8. Does innovation relate to clients needs? How?

9. Does the size and structure of the organisation affect its ability to be innovative? How?

10. How fast does the organisation innovate?

11. What is the competition doing?

12. What are the industry benchmarks?

Step 2: Develop an improvement plan

The diagnostic analysis will highlight gaps in the innovation process. The second step is to develop an improvement plan to progressively eliminate these shortcomings.

Steps 1 and 2 can be completed fairly quickly (approximately one to two weeks) depending upon the level of expertise you engage.

Step 3: Implementation

The third step is to implement the improvements, which will take longer (possibly between six and eighteen months depending on how much has to be done and the level of available resources). This will also be affected by the amount of cultural change necessary to ensure the innovation process is embraced at all levels of the organisation.