“ Innovation is now the primary driver of growth, prosperity and quality of life”. Paul Romer of Stanford University summarizes for us the essence of innovation. It is no wonder that an innovation genius like Steve Jobs is a rare jewel and his recent death leaves a vacuum in many people’s hearts
According to Thomas Friedman “…the most important rule of business in today’s integrated and digitized global market, where knowledge and innovation tools are so widely distributed… is this: Whatever can be done, will be done. The only question is will it be done by you or to you. Just don’t think it won’t be done. If you have an idea in Detroit or Tennessee (or in Minsk, Skopje or Vienna), promise me that you’ll pursue it, because someone in Denmark or Tel Aviv will do so a second later.”
INNOVATION DEFINED
What is innovation? According to Carlson and Wilmot, innovation is the process of creating and delivering new customer value in the market place. All innovations provide customer value, defined as a product’s or service’s benefits minus its costs. Customer value includes not just the tangible product or service benefits but also intangible needs such as service, convenience and personal identity.
INNOVATION DISCIPLINES
Innovation is a discipline. Goal is to create a “systematized method of producing it” based on fundamental innovation best practices that could be taught and understood by all people in an enterprise. There are 5 disciplines of innovation. First, is important needs. Innovation has to work on important customer and market needs, not just on what is interesting. Two, is value creation. Use the tools of value creation to create customer value fast. Third, innovation champions to drive the value creation process. Fourth, innovation teams, using a multi-disciplinary, team based approach to collect genius level IQ and fifth is organizational alignment, get your team and enterprise aligned to systematically produce high value innovation.
ENTERPRISE DEVELOPMENT GROUP
Most companies recognize the need for innovation. The core challenge is how to launch it and best of all how to sustain it so it becomes culture. We have continuing consultations with innovation experts and our partners Herman Gyr and Lisa Friedman of Enterprise Development Group based in Palo Alto, California. They are consultants to Silicon Valley companies and have also consulted with companies and organizations in Europe, South America, Asia and Africa. After many skype conversations, we invited them to come over to the country in January and help us build the innovation practice in the Philippines and in the Asean region. They have done work in Singapore and have seen the dynamism of Asia.
CEO INNOVATION SUMMIT 2012
We are excited to welcome them to run our “CEO Innovation Summit “, in January, 2012 and after to do an “Innovation Boot Camp for Enterprise Champions”. The Enterprise Development Group (EDG) is a team of expert thinkers, facilitators and trainers who have been consulting since 1986 across a wide range of industries – from high tech to sustainability, hospitality to healthcare, academia to energy, transportation to telecommunications and manufacturing to media.
EDG enables people to look into the future, to discover important new ideas and to spread passion for innovation. It has a unique approach to enterprise strategy and transformation that lets the leaders see the big picture and effectively turn disruptions into business advantage and superior performance.
Herman Gyr, Ph.D. and Lisa Friedman Ph.D.are founding partners of the Enterprise Development Group and creator of the Enterprise Development Framework, a model for engaging leaders and other stakeholders in the transformation of their enterprise. In projects ranging throughout the United States and Europe to Asia Pacific, South America and South Africa, Herman has specialized in working with enterprises living through periods of dramatic disruption – many of them underestimating the potential for achieving their highest aspirations during periods of change. Lisa works with enterprises globally to facilitate a shared understanding of the emerging trends transforming industries, to shape vision and strategy for the future, to teach simple but powerful innovation practices and to align organizations to realize their goals. She coordinates EDG client exchanges and designs EDG’s innovation tours, bringing leaders from around the world to Silicon Valley to explore examples of innovation throughout the enterprise.
LEADER CHAMPIONS
They cited the importance of a champion. Champions are typically CEOS taking the lead. But they can also be people come from any part of the enterprise who are empowered by leaders. They have the passion and commitment to make and see things happen. They have a vision and they inspire their team and partners to take responsibility. They lead the value creation process starting with an important customer need and driving the value creation process.
The CEO Innovation Summit focuses on the developing the innovation strategy, creating shared concepts, language and tools and building innovation architecture and leadership. It will also discuss emerging risks and rewards in the external business trends and present the innovation economy, that is marked with exponential change, changing business and organizational life cycles and customer value. Finally, it will share tools for action, boosting a company’s capability for innovation and the rapid idea improvement session. Practical on line tools on putting genius to work and innovations campaigns will also be tackled. The day ends with the process for developing an innovation roadmap.
We invite our readers to participate in this golden opportunity in January to start to improve innovation in our country. Let us not simply be artistic and creative people, let us innovate delivering great results for our enterprises.
[Tita Datu Puangco is President and CEO of Ancilla Enterprise Development Consulting, an innovative provider of Organization Development and Training solutions in the ASEAN region. These solutions include strategy development and execution, managing change breakthroughs, brand management, innovation and human resource systems. For your letters/ feedback, kindly email: tita.datu76@gmail.com, For other inquiries, please call 8810-3129/0920-9218332/0917-8348176]
