Weer een geweldig nieuw boek over INNOVATIE: "Innovation as Usual"

Innovation as Usual: How to Help Your People Bring Great Ideas to Life, geschreven door de Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg en Paddy Miller.

In de Sunday Times van 24 maart 2013 schrijft Hannah Prevett een prachtig artikel over het nieuw uitgekomen boek. Zij geeft aan dat de kern van het boek gaat over het feit dat het aanbrengen van FOCUS bij innovatie veel meer oplevert dan een ongebreidelde VRIJHEID.
Zie hieronder een aantal quotes uit haar artikel:

When organisations urge their teams to think creatively, employees are often given no guidelines — they are simply told to “think outside the box”. But sometimes a little direction is much more useful in creating a culture of innovation, the book argues.

“There are these perceptions that if you want people to be creative, it’s just about giving them all the freedom in the world. That might work in some settings — if you are an R&D company, for example. But my experience is that, if you give people total freedom in a regular company, that’s paralysing.”

In the book, the authors explain that employees are used to making micro-decisions as part of their day-to-day duties. But when they are taken out of that environment, they will come face to face with choices that are unfamiliar and make them feel uncomfortable. This can lead to inertia.

The theory has been borne out by empirical research. A study undertaken by the authors in 2011 with Koen Klokgieters, vice president of strategy and innovation at the consultant Capgemini, found that the failure of companies to direct people’s search for new ideas may be the most widespread barrier to innovation.

The researchers solicited the views of 260 executives worldwide, most of whom had the word “innovation” in their job title. Only 42% of the companies surveyed had an explicit innovation strategy, and just 55% of the executives demonstrated an awareness of any systems they had in place to help employees innovate.

Op de site van The Telegraph (UK) staan zes videoa's waarin Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg een snapshot geeft van de belangrijkste stappen die je moet zetten om meer creativiteit en innovatie bij de werknemers in organisatie te stimuleren:
1.Focus, 2.Connect, 3.Tweak, 4.Filter, 5.Stealthstorm and 6.Persist.