THE I-WORD

How many meetings have you attended where someone – possibly even you – declared that it was time for innovation? But the reality behind the rhetoric is that, nearly 80 years after the idea of innovation emerged from the researches of French sociologist Gabriel Tarde, we still can’t innovate how we want, where we want and when we want.

Paul Sloane, author of ‘The Innovative Leader’, has an explanation for this innovation gap, saying bosses need to replace this “bland, vague, management speak” with what he calls “A Declaration Of Innovation” (http://www.innovationexcellence.com/blog/2011/12/26/issu e-a-declaration-of-innovation/).

This declaration must, Sloan says, spell out why innovation is critical for the company, where it is needed (e.g. in launching new products, improving processes, breaking into new markets), invite everyone to propose ideas, promise to hear and respond to ideas, pledge to commit resources to developing ideas, sketch a process by which ideas are evaluated and managed, make it clear that ideas from any and every part of the organisation are welcome and emphasise that employees will not be blamed if innovative ideas, honestly pursued, fail.

This kind of specific, detailed commitment is essential, Sloan says, if innovation is to become more than a buzzword. His findings are backed by Jeffrey Paul Baumgartner, author of Report 103 (http://www.jpb.com/report103/archive.php?issue_no=20111 116) who points out that the more innovative a company is – he uses Google, Apple and Gore-Tex as examples – the less likely they are to pepper their website with the word “innovation”.