Did you know that more than 90% of executives are dissatisfied with their innovation performance? Innovation is not delivering the required impact. This isn’t good enough, and innovation needs to get better.

That’s a lot of unhappy leaders.

Those leaders are investing in innovation and being sold a diamond, only to be left with a lump of zirconium. They may have seen a glint of activities, new innovation labs and well-resourced innovation programs, but the end result does not have the weight or worth anticipated.

Innovation is not delivering the required impact. This isn’t good enough, and innovation needs to get better.

Right now, organisations are being challenged to their very core. They can’t always do what they’ve always done. The established ways of working, successful business models and profitable customers can no longer be relied upon. Companies need to innovate to stay in front or even afloat.

Leaders know this. Innovation as a management discipline has been around for over 40 years. So what’s the problem?

The truth is, organisations find it hard to build systematic innovation capability and demonstrate innovation value and impact. Why?

Because innovation is difficult to measure, manage and create true systematic impact due to seven common reasons:

  1. Idea-heavy: Too big a focus on the more creative front-end of ideation phase
  2. What’s the point?: Organisations unsure of what the role of innovation is
  3. No process: Innovation not being approached in a systematic, structured way
  4. Innovation Island: Innovation not aligning or linking to the corporate strategic direction
  5. Not in the DNA: Innovation not embedded as a sustainable organisational capability
  6. No goal: There is seldomly a clear set of objectives for innovation
  7. Bad metrics: Innovation being incorrectly measured and managed.

Our purpose at Innovate21 is to make innovation better, in order to enable organisations to deliver innovation impact. Not do innovation, but to embed innovation as a strategic imperative that drives and delivers the future they need.

We know numerous organisations who have experienced the innovation shortfall. They’ve dipped their toes into the innovation pool, but didn’t get the impact they wanted and needed. To be honest, we’re fed up of it.

We love innovation and know the benefits that can be enjoyed from better innovation. We want leaders to get the impact they urgently need.

We’ve gone under the hood with many of the most successful innovative organisations; by reverse-engineering their innovation programs and identifying the keys needed to deliver impact, we’ve helped make innovation better.

In a series of posts, we share how to make innovation better. To read the  series, please find the links below:

  1. Making Innovation Better
  2. A Better Innovation Approach
  3. A Why is Needed to Innovate Better
  4. Better Innovation Execution
  5. Creating a Better Innovation Culture

Photo credit: Kendall Ruth on Unsplash

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