Series Podcasts

Innovation begins and ends with people, individuals who have the courage to push the boundaries. It also requires a corporate culture that nurtures and rewards creative thinking, where people feel comfortable enough to voice new ideas, no matter how small. That is where successful leadership comes in. A skilled and innovative leader must be a fearless visionary committed to backing bold ideas.

Mel Kamarzin, CEO of Sirius Radio believes “there is no punishment that goes for taking a chance, making a decision”. Yet too often firms don’t take the steps really required to innovate because they want to protect their existing offerings. They seal their fate by doing just enough to get by. Fear of changing the status quo can be paralysing but if you are not moving forward and innovating in today’s challenging economic environment, it’s worse than standing still. You’re effectively moving backwards.

Innovation can be a hard concept to pin down. That’s why defining what it means to an organisation is the first step towards truly engaging customers. Radical thinking needs to be employed to come up with the blue-sky ideas. To turn those ideas into revenue generators means making a creative leap beyond the nuts and bolts of a product and really connecting with consumers. Ursula Burns, Chief Executive of Xerox says, “Customers can’t really articulate always what they want. They give you a rough outline”.

Corporate social responsibility was once derided as inconsistent with profit-making, but today firms have transformed their thinking and recognize that doing good can be good for business. What’s more, as consumers increasingly prioritise accountability and integrity from companies, it is clear that the social responsibility movement is here to stay. The problem in the past was that too many firms confused responsibility with philanthropy and failed to identify the business case for going green. Dan Esty, author of Green to Gold says , “the smart companies are finding that they can pursue the agenda in a way that solves their customer’s problems, allows them to innovate and bring new products to market”.

For a company wishing to transform its business, innovation is one of the most effective tools available. Yet while executives may embrace bold ideas and disruptive thinking, as Scott Berkun says, "the best way to measure innovation is the number of ideas that make it into products”. That’s why firms need to be armed with an execution plan to prevent falling at the final hurdle.