Rivers of Innovation

We see innovation as a grand capability. It enables all forms of new or different things to be done. Innovation provides the means to create the future. It can, and should, become a force with momentum and direction. When innovation is a driving force it provokes multiple actions to find, create or integrate opportunities, select the best of them and transform these into value. The force of innovation requires feeding with entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship, ambition, intensity, alignment, skill, realism and resources.

In a healthy small organisation, there will be scores, perhaps hundreds, of innovation initiatives underway at any time. In larger organisations there will be many thousands of initiatives that will form rivers of innovation largely directed achieve specific ends but being responsive to unexpected events.

We see strategy as a different but interrelated force; one that provides direction, alignment and meaning. When an effective strategy is in place then an organisation will have sufficient clarity of purpose to guide flows of commitment decisions that will define its pathway through its chosen fields of endeavour.

Effective strategies are more than intentions. They are architectural plans for organisation development. For, without the means to realise intentions they languish in the graveyard of failed hopes. There are additional insights in a 3-minute film by Dave Francis.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsrhUPAzUy8