Articles

Establishing innovation in your organisation - Mind the Gap!

Innovation, though largely unrecognised, is the most powerful determinant of how successful an organisation will be, both today and tomorrow.

The opportunities for innovation and business benefit are immense, whether implementing new products & services (product innovation), new ways of delivering these products & services (process innovation) or new business models (business model innovation). Yet, there appears to be a real gap between executive expectations and reality of actual performance achieved.

Design thinking for consultants

I was reading an article by Tim Brown, of design consultancy IDEO, the other day when something stopped me in my tracks.  He was writing about the emerging buzz-phrase Design Thinking and was explaining how “Design Thinking transforms organisations and inspires innovation”.

I thought to myself  “but that’s what we do.”

Cue some frenzied activity on Amazon in a hungry search for more books on this new subject. Alas there aren’t many as yet so I was left to ponder the role of Design Thinking – and its implication for management consultants – for myself.

Managing change & making it stick

I often talk to people who have been scarred and left weary by the onslaught of unsuccessful initiatives, “we’ve tried that before…….. they don’t listen……. they’ve made their minds up already” and the anecdotes of failure continue.

It’s not a case of ‘just do it’, after all, we are not just seeking compliance, but commitment from everyone to achieve the best result possible.

Managing change within an organisation is not straightforward and things can go wrong,  nevertheless getting the basics right can help significantly to avoid pitfalls and recover successfully from the unexpected.