Innovation Management - Emotion, Habit, and Culture can be Hard to Change!

Creativity can be defined as problem identification and idea generation whilst innovation can be defined as idea selection, development and commercialisation.

There are distinct processes that enhance problem identification and idea generation and, similarly, distinct processes that enhance idea selection, development and commercialisation. Whilst there is no sure fire route to commercial success, these processes improve the probability that good ideas will be generated and selected and that investment in developing and commercialising those ideas will not be wasted.

However, Franklin (2003) argues that even great ideas developed and commercialised brilliantly may fail to succeed due to cultural, emotional and habitual barriers. Even obviously cheaper, simpler and more effective ideas fail to take off.

Whilst there are systems such as the S-curve that help predict and determine the magnitude of these barriers and hence the risk of successful commercialisation, the very nature of them makes them very hard and pin down in any quantitative or qualitative analysis.

The strength of cultural, emotional and habitual barriers can be illustrated by the examples below:

a) 11 million people have died of AIDS in Africa. Yet there is a taboo against condom use.

b) The metric system is obviously a great system and used almost the world over - except in the United States.

c) The ATM - cash point machines - initially failed to take off because people believed that they did not have the right to access money so easily.

d) Scurvy was prevalent for years and the cure - lemon juice - was known, yet was not recognised as a legitimate cure for centuries.

e) Sewage systems are only today being adopted in rural and poorer parts of the world.

These topics are covered in depth in the MBA dissertation on Managing Creativity & Innovation, which can be purchased (along with a Creativity and Innovation DIY Audit, Good Idea Generator Software and Power Point Presentation) from http://www.managing-creativity.com.

You can also receive a regular, free newsletter by entering your email address at this site.

You are free to reproduce this article as long as no changes are made and the author's name and site URL are retained.

Kal Bishop MBA is a management consultant based in London, UK. He has consulted in the visual media and software industries and for clients such as Toshiba and Transport for London. He has led Improv, creativity and innovation workshops, exhibited artwork in San Francisco, Los Angeles and London and written a number of screenplays. He is a passionate traveller. He can be reached on http://www.managing-creativity.com

More resources:

RELATED ARTICLES

Jewelry Use by Employees
Many companies have dress codes, which include jewelry. Some companies do this because they do not wish to offend customers who are of various faiths by employees who wear necklaces with religious symbols.

Managing Motivation
"Without the chance to meaningfully participate in steering one's own destiny, without the opportunity to gain the sincere respect of one's own peers, without an honest stake in making the community more successful through one's own work and ideas, employability can quickly decay into generic training programs or bogus choices..

The New Five Truths of Employee Motivation
Motivation is a term that is so widely used, yet many managers know little about how it really works. But it doesn't have to be confusing-in fact, it's quite simple.

Five Days to More Effective Inventory Management
The litany of headaches related to the implementation and on-going care-and-feeding of enterprise-based inventory management applications (upgrading, downtime, maintenance, hardware obsolescence, and so on) is long. These implementation issues are enough make the savviest of companies want to engage in anything but another supply chain or inventory management software implementation.

Building the Trust in Your Employees - 12 Easy Tips
In Stephen Covey's great book, "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People", he talks about the 'emotional bank account', where you have to build a credit in your relationship with the individuals who you work with (and everyone else as well!).If what you do isn't 'trustworthy', then all you have done in your gentle listening and asking great and interested questions to build, is to 'debit' your account.

10 Fool Proof Ways To Intensify Your Profits
1. Create benefit intensifiers for your list of ad copy benefits.

Managing Group Meetings
MANAGING SMALL MEETINGS: Keep the size of the meeting as small as possible. The larger the group, the more complicated communication becomes and the more garbled the purpose may get.

Are You Measuring Something Meaningful?
Avoiding inert measures that anaesthetise your performance management.INTRODUCTIONYou sit before the monthly report, which might be an inch or so thick, and you contemplate whether it's the best use of your time to paw through the pages to check if there's anything useful in there for you.

Stopping The Brain Drain: How To Capture Key Business Knowledge Before It Walks Out The Door
The verdict is in: More and more baby boomers will be leaving the workplace sooner, rather than later. Many industries are predicting that between 25 and 45% of their more senior employees will soon be departing their organizations.

Learn to Assert Yourself
Pinpoint your own blocks to assertiveness: fear of disapproval, need to please others, fear of being too masculine or feminine, or the dread of making mistakes.Visualize yourself dealing effectively with a problem situation by considering alternative responses.

Biometrics and "Return On Investment"
At this time of tight budgets, the mantra of business is "Return On Investment!" With few exceptions, expenditures are measured against the bottom line. Outlays for capital expenses are strictly evaluated in terms of profitability and the total cost of ownership.

Executive Performance -- Whos to Blame for Incompetent Managers?
A recent article in the Wall Street Journal raised the question: Who's to blame for inept managers?The answer, of course, is the superiors who hire or promote them -- but not because they intentionally select or retain poor performers. Every leader knows that his or her own success depends on putting the right people in the right positions.

Turbo-Charge Your Rollout with ERM
Employees are the often-neglected stakeholders in the success or failure of a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) initiative. But employees don't always resist new ways of doing business.

How You Can Learn to be a Better Manager
When you first take over a department, expectations are usually high but operations are sometimes in disarray. The staff is disorganized, goals aren't being met, and hours are spent on unproductive tasks.

4 Steps to Success In Life, Business, The Universe And Everything
Everyone wants to succeed in life. And no one starts a business of any sort, on-line or off-line, wanting to fail.

Guidelines For Conducting A Good Meeting
Okay, so you've figured out what kind of meeting is needed, you've planned well and you have all the right materials. How about the meeting itself? How can you be sure the meeting you've so carefully planned and prepared actually comes off as expected?The checklist below can help you through the process.

Miracle Max On Market Breakthroughs
Successful enterprise building requires seven elements. These are:1.

The Diamond Cutter
Geshe Michael Roach is a Princeton graduate and a Buddhist monk. After graduation, he spent seven years studying the wisdom of Tibetan Buddhism.

Effective Meetings: Why Most Meetings are a Waste of Time
Whether your company holds one meeting a week or dozens of meetings a day it is essential that this time is used efficiently and effectively. Most meetings are less effective than they could be not because they are poorly managed, but because meeting managers spend all of their time focusing on the one or two hours when people will be gathered around the conference table or video screen.

Business Leadership Skills - Managing the Human Being Behind the Business
Managing the Human Being Behind the Business It's a common problem and we've all seen it - business owners that are just 'too busy' all of the time, and as a result, do not enjoy the success in business they had hoped for. Let's not kid ourselves, there is a lot to focus on: technology, employees, sales, marketing and so on.