Axel Schultze opened the roundtable with a topic that has been current for some time among the BlueCallom community: Innovation is a CEO Mandate. What do CEOs need to do to empower their teams to become truly innovative? 

In the first place is clear communication between the C-level managers and innovation teams i.e. define the innovation goals, directions, and methods. We have already mentioned several times the importance of identifying team members with unique abilities to move the team and project forward. 

How to identify innovative minds? 

When we talk about successful innovation, execution is a part of it. As Christian Weh, Senior Director Innovation & Global Projects at Johnson & Johnson, said: “all successful innovators are playing an important role in the execution process.” The Maverick traits of a person are always visible through their independence, creativity, and experimentation. Truly talented individuals exist and they are the ones who always tend to be the best performers in the organization. Christian also mentioned capability building training as a part of human resources management, where organizations provide talent programs, incorporate continuous learning and improvement which is focused on specific capabilities. This tool is used to identify innovative talents. Ambition is another powerful trait and its impetus for success and achievement since ambitious people are goal-oriented and always strive for the next achievement.

Luuk Houtepen, Director of Strategic Partnerships and Innovation at SThree, sees exponential thinking as one of the important factors when it comes to recognizing talent. Individuals who possess this trait can envision the future and reveal new opportunities. We need to start visualizing the future to harness the potential of technology and positively impact our lives, not just in five or ten years, but also in a few generations.

“If you are really driven to make a change, to prove yourself, you won’t just settle down. You will be ambitious enough to push forward, to identify problems, and opportunities,” said Christian. He gave us an example, “Amazon did disrupt the book industry with audiobooks and Jeff Bezos can be described as an ambitious leader who set his targets and went beyond the next business plan.” 

Innovation is not only the CEO Mandate, it is also a CEO Task

Instead of having more and more innovations, most of the organizations are just followers with no concrete business plans. And this is the reason Luk said that “Innovation is not only the CEO Mandate, it is also a CEO task to open people’s minds up to where the world is going.”

Axel Schultze agreed that innovation is a CEO task, but when we look at their daily life, which includes political ambitions, involvement in the investor industry plus running a company, there is very limited time left for an extra assignment. But if innovation becomes the core of a business, the CEO has to give his/her best to encourage the innovation team and support the innovation project. 

As Luuk already said, exponential thinking is important, I would like to point out the following: 

Exponential thinking brings us to innovation and the BlueCallom Equation, G = I * E² (Groundbreaking Innovation (G)  = Ideation (I) * Execution(E)²), where the brilliant ideation plus exponential execution describes the foundation of any innovation process. 

Culture of Failure

A culture of failure is something that should be present in most organizations. Failure also means learning and if we want to make a change and personal progress, we need to be willing to identify our weaknesses and maximize our strengths. Luuk explained that we, unfortunately, don’t have the “Culture of Failure” and therefore most people are afraid to make decisions – it is less risky not to make decisions at all. 

What Axel has noticed is when it comes to large organizations where the CEO makes decisions, there is a risk that some decisions are not good which can result in job loss. On the other hand, making no decision because of the risk is a good idea.  It turns out that making no decisions is the best thing a CEO can do. Unfortunately, this is a common practice in the western world. 

Even when we look into the eastern societies, Asian countries, the decision-making process is also a long process. They might be faster in the decision-making than Europeans and the reason for that is that the whole team is included in the decision-making. Also if it turns out the decision was right and the first results are visible, employees are getting the rewards. 

The biggest advantage of startups over enterprises is that the decisions are made by people who have invested their own money. As soon as you hire a CEO, very rarely that person will become a decision-maker. 

When a company is determined to make groundbreaking innovations, that division has to be extracted as a separate legal identity. In this way, the innovation team has, so to say, “free hands” to do things and make decisions without being controlled. 

Summary

When it comes to the innovation process the most important is to have the right team on board. Innovative minds can be found in any organization and the CEO’s task is:

a.) recognize innovative minds 

b.) nurture innovative minds

c.) encourage innovative minds 

People with an innovative mindset think ahead, are creative, are likely to experiment, and are visionaries. These professionals involved in the day-to-day running of an organization can overcome obstacles, idealize, and generate truly disruptive processes, products, and services.

If you are interested in joining our next roundtable by-invitation-only event, please send us an email: tanja@bluecallom.com

The post Key Thoughts: Innovation Thought Leader Roundtable | November 2021 appeared first on BlueCallom.

When we talk about innovation culture, the first thing that comes to mind is a work environment where people can develop their ideas. To hear more about this topic, I would like to share amazing insights from Erik Wirsing, Vice President of Global Innovation at DB Schenker, the latest guest on the Navigation of Ingenuity podcast. 

What is Innovation Culture? 

Innovation culture is all about bringing new knowledge into the organization. As Erik pointed out knowledge has to be shared among the people, let them learn something new, and encourage them to create new ideas and solutions. 

One thing DB Schenker is proud of is their innovation department – a place where they bring experience to the right people, train them, empower them and let them be creative. When you create an environment of constant change, networking, agility, and collaboration, employees’ motivation brings increased productivity and higher levels of output that will help organizations reach their important goals.

The biggest obstacle to innovation is having too much guidance and instructions that have to be followed. Put all this aside and give employees the freedom to work independently. This is the recipe that makes DB Schenker successful in their industry – logistics. When empowering team members it is important to provide them with resources, funds, time, and place but keep in mind that this might fail. 

How do you encourage your team to be innovative?

Team members and employees need to feel confident and comfortable to express their thoughts. Therefore the right communication style is the answer to this question. 

We also have to mention the importance of team diversity since their varied backgrounds and experiences allow them to bring broader ideas and new perspectives. Curiosity, openness, and emotional intelligence are crucial when it comes to empowering. It’s not all about monetary incentives and the best way for empowering your employees is to enable them to reach their full potential. Just like Erik said: “Help them to shine”. Erik tells us the story of how DB Schenker’s sparked innovation within their organization:

When Eric joined the company, he was responsible for global innovation and all the innovative activities. Since he had no idea how to run this globally, one of his team members came up with the idea of an innovation magazine that collects stories from colleagues and their experiences. Since everyone wanted to be a part of this magazine, the idea was very well accepted and the storytelling approach got more popular over the years. With time, the sales team recognized the value of the innovation magazine for their customers, which resulted in the new format – an external magazine. With the approach of bringing people together and promoting their success through the “Innovation Champion of the month” column, DB Schenker continues to be a leader in supply chain management and logistics solutions.

What was your last innovation?

As Erik stressed, it is not about establishing something completely new but adopting from different industries. 

His last innovation was not planned, it just happened accidentally at one event he participated in. Talking to one of the attendees who work in the roofing industry he found out about a special paint which keeps the roofing firm. Erik realized a potential use for the paint and adopted it in the logistics industry. As a result, we have a transport vehicle whose floor is coated with this paint to prevent the movement of cargo while driving. Now customers are using it for the forklifts. Such an easy and spontaneous idea provided benefits for different industries.

Creating the next groundbreaking innovation

We also asked Erik if there is one thing he wants to invent or see invented, what would it be? This is what he said: having one device (ie smartphone) with the possibility of the screen adjustments just like we do with Windows on the PC. He wants to stop traveling with his phone, tablet, and computer, one device that can expand or contract based on the use. Other great things he would like to see in the future are self-driving vehicles and space tourism available for everyone. 

Bringing different innovative minds together and being able to manage a big global innovation culture it is important for all the team members to know that within organizations there are people who are going to support their “crazy ideas”. Structured organization, developing a business model, and taking into consideration customer feedback is the foundation for tackling a main corporate “Innovation Blocker”. 

We thank Erik Wirsing for being a special guest on the Navigation of Ingenuity podcast. With certainty, I can say we all learned a lot from his experience in the innovation world. To listen to the episode please visit: https://dev.bluecallom.com/podcast/

Authored by: Tanja Sopcic

The post Innovation Culture Discussion with Erik Wirsing appeared first on BlueCallom.

What worked for startups can now also work for enterprises. While the innovation process, purpose, and reasoning should be the same, the leadership structure is very different. Over the past four years, we learned so much about the difference between innovation in corporations and in startups that today realize: Enterprises had no realistic chance to be innovative – even when acquiring a startup. That difference requires an understanding of how innovative ideas are created, getting your c-level involved in crafting an innovation mandate, and redefining your innovation process to focus on your customer’s true needs and dreams. It’s time to rethink the act of innovation and pursue genuine groundbreaking innovation. 

How ideas get created

Neuroscience had the single biggest impact on our modern understanding of innovation. One key aspect is the realization that ideas don’t come randomly and there are no “magic ideas out of the blue”. The brain composes ideas from past experiences and those compositions represent the power and the limit of our creativity. We cannot have ideas about situations that we have never experienced. Every successful innovation started by observing and understanding an existing problem. If there is no problem to solve, there is no success to be gained. When we know how innovation is created, we can request certain results, we can request insights, and measure and manage the effort. Most importantly executives, now know what they can expect or request from an innovation effort. This understanding drives an entirely different ideation process and calls for a very different innovation process in general: it requires CEO and customers involvement.

Innovation is a CEO mandate

Genuine Innovation is a long-term engagement. It usually takes less than six months to create an innovative solution, but on average 5 to 10 years to be recognized as an innovation in the market. Innovation is the duality of brilliant ideation and relentless execution. Even the fastest startups took 7 to 10 years to become market leaders. Moreover, most of today’s innovations of significance consumed more than a billion dollars to become successful. Capital requirements of that size cannot be decided by an innovation department. With today’s knowledge of how innovative ideas can be stimulated and how those ideas could be brought to market, repeatability, the act of innovation is changing profoundly – even for startups. With that, another key consideration needs to be made: An innovation team that comes up with a new idea must also bring it successfully to market. The existing sales, marketing, production, and logistics departments do not offer any leverage – it’s the opposite; they cannot bring a highly innovative solution to market and sell conventional products to conventional buyers. It’s about Time, Capital, and Structure decisions that CEOs together with their boards can only make.

For more information and additional insights download the “Innovation is a CEO mandate” Whitepaper.

It’s all about the customer

By working with thousands of startups, we learned that innovation success stemmed from a deep understanding of the customer’s problems. This knowledge, combined with our understanding of how innovative ideas are composed, made us realize there was a need for completely rethinking innovation. While corporate innovation labs either spend lots of time finding ideas, experimenting or randomly ideating, the top unicorns developed brilliant ideas based on their research and moved on to relentless execution. Corporate innovation labs try to solve problems they believe exist. They follow the model of “wouldn’t it be cool if we could…” and they love to play all kinds of “thinking games”. They heard about “fail and fail fast”, “pivoting” and “experimenting” without ever questioning if that is actually delivering results.  They copy the 90% of startups that fail without even knowing. 

Successful entrepreneurs look intensely into what their designated audience is doing, what they like and dislike, what they think, and how they see their future. They may not build what their customers asked for, but develop and deliver a solution that is in their dreams. 

Stop looking at what others do

find out what your customers are dreaming about.

Solve the problems they have that others could not solve yet.

You can catch up with the market to survive by following what others do. But the financial market will recognize it accordingly. A follower won’t beat the innovator. Rethink the act of innovation – define the innovation culture at the top, listen to your customers and stop being a follower.

Authored by: Alyssa Wengi

The post Rethinking the Act of Innovation appeared first on BlueCallom.

We talked about the concept of Deep Innovation Design in January this year. We made the analogy to athletes and how they went through an amazing transformation. In just 50 years amazing superstars!

Today we are ready to rock innovators, managing their minds, like others their bodies.

Today we have a very exciting introduction

Our software team made huge leaps with our Innovation Design Software. It’s the very first Neuro-Ideation-based software helping innovation managers to stimulate creativity like never before imaginable. “BlueCallom” is our enterprise-grade Innovation Management System with a very advanced executive dashboard.

BlueCallom EXPERIENCE 2020

Now EXPERIENCE yourself, together with innovation managers from around the world, what Deep Innovation Design and Neuro Ideation can do for you, when used in a methodical way and when supported by technology. A six-week program, where you experience an entire innovation process from “where to start” to groundbreaking innovation.

If you are up to an amazing experience, where you learn more about innovation and innovation management than in any program before, join the BlueCallom Experience. Of course, it’s all online.  See more details and registration

Please reach out to us any time if you have any questions or we want to know more.

Hoping to welcome you online at “BlueCallom Experience” on August 24.

The post BlueCallom Progress & Update appeared first on BlueCallom.