"Maybe you should do more than have a plan to create a plan!" - Futurist Jim Carroll
My news clipping service recently picked up this gem of insight from a Conference Board leadership survey:
"Outside of Japan, few CEOs are looking to raise prices in 2025. Instead, the focus is on innovation, tech, and product development.
Innovation leads: Worldwide, 37% of CEOs say innovation is a top priority for growing profits, followed by introducing new products/services (29%) and investing in technology, including AI (26%)."
This was a bit of music to my ears since it's always good to see an indication that one of the most important actions for future growth comes to the forefront.
On the other hand, this took me back to my post the other day where someone commented that 'we decided to do innovation this year,' implying it was a one-time thing. (It's not!). I thought it might be a good idea to look back at a lot of my guidance on innovative thinking to provide a detailed structure for organizations to pursue so that they are doing much more than talking about innovation - they are embracing it as a core value and key strategy.
Why is that? Because I have learned that many organizations when they come to decide that innovation is a priority, start to plan on what to do, but are never quite sure exactly where to start. In doing so, they often spend more time planning to have an innovation plan than actually pursuing any type of innovation activity!
With that in mind, I went back to GoogleNotebook LLM, which has now become one of my go-to AI tools, to ask it what it could find in my more than 4,000 posts that I've written about the future, trends, and innovation, as to what organizations should do to align to the innovation opportunity.
Given this, provide a list of 50 things that organizations should do at a strategic, planning, investment, and execution level to provide for successful innovation.
It came back to me with quite the list! I took that and had it generate a little podcast - it's a good, quick summary of what you should be thinking about. Simply hit play!
I'm often reluctant to share a lot of AI-generated material, but this was such a good result that I thought it would be worthwhile to include it in its entirety. I also summarized this into a 4-item strategic framework.
Innovation 2025 - A Strategic Framework
GoogleNotebook LLM: Okay, here are 60 actions organizations should take to foster successful innovation, categorized into strategic, planning, investment, and execution levels, with the most important aspects in bold and a descriptive sentence explaining the importance of each:
Strategy Level
- Focus on growth. Prioritize growth-oriented initiatives to ensure the organization is continually moving forward and not stagnating.
- Embrace change. Actively seek and accept change, as it is a constant factor in today’s business environment, and those who adapt thrive.
- Increase agility and flexibility. Develop the ability to quickly respond and adapt to market changes and new opportunities.
- Establish a forward-oriented mindset. Cultivate a culture that looks to the future, anticipates trends, and prepares for what's coming next, rather than dwelling on the past.
- Re-evaluate the mission. Regularly assess and adjust the organization's purpose and goals in light of changing market conditions, customer expectations, and emerging opportunities.
- Banish complacency and skepticism. Eliminate any attitudes of resistance to new ideas and change, fostering an environment where innovation is welcome.
- Shift from threat to opportunity. Reframe challenges and potential obstacles as chances for growth and innovation.
- Harness external creativity. Look beyond the organization’s walls for new ideas and insights, partnering with other entities to accelerate innovation.
- Build a collaborative culture. Create an environment that encourages communication and teamwork to harness the collective knowledge and creativity of the organization.
- Develop a strong agility index. Measure and improve the organization's capacity to adapt and respond to rapid change by focusing on metrics that matter.
- Recognize limits. Acknowledge that no one organization or person can be good at everything and focus on areas of core expertise.
- Align strategies to big bets. Prioritize and commit to strategic initiatives that have the greatest potential for significant impact and growth.
- Redefine goals, establish priorities, and set targets. Create a clear direction and purpose for the organization, and set a path toward success.
- Enact change. Move beyond discussing innovation and actively implement new strategies and ideas to achieve transformation.
- Be relentless in customer service. Understand that customer satisfaction is paramount, and use innovation to enhance the customer experience.
Planning Level
- Establish a "trends radar". Develop systems for observing and tracking emerging trends that might affect the organization.
- Re-examine business strategy. Continuously analyze and refine the overall approach to the market, ensuring it aligns with innovation objectives.
- Plan for short-term longevity. Create flexible plans that can adapt to immediate challenges and ensure that the organization remains competitive for the foreseeable future.
- Presume a lack of rigidity. Ensure that planning processes are flexible and can adapt to change.
- Prepare for business intensity. Recognize the need for fast-paced operations and be ready to meet increased demands with quick decision-making.
- Monitor global idea cycles. Stay informed about the latest developments by tapping into the global network of ideas and innovation.
- Anticipate big changes. Look ahead to potential future disruptions and prepare for possible effects on the organization.
- Realign innovation pipeline. Ensure that the entire innovation process from idea generation through to implementation is optimized for speed and efficiency.
- Pinpoint weaknesses. Identify areas of the organization that may be hindering innovation, or that may benefit from process improvement.
- Find routines and break them. Actively challenge established practices and norms to foster a culture of innovation and creativity.
- Adjust to rapidly evolving markets. Develop the ability to react quickly to changes in customer demands and market conditions.
- Streamline processes. Improve and simplify operations and workflows to create efficiencies that support the innovation pipeline.
- Focus on the brand. Ensure the brand image remains relevant, innovative, and aligned with the needs of the customer.
- Ensure supportability. Confirm that innovation efforts have adequate resources and support to succeed in the long term.
- Promote more idea sharing. Encourage managers to adopt new ways of leading their teams, breaking down hierarchies, and promoting new ideas and collaboration.
Investment Level
- Invest in experiential capital. Prioritize gaining knowledge through hands-on experiences, experimentation, and risk-taking.
- Increase skills accessibility capability. Focus on developing a workforce with the necessary skills and access to knowledge for innovation.
- Develop creativity capital. Make investments in the culture and tools that allow for creative thinking and innovation.
- Pursue big math. Make use of data and analytics to identify opportunities for innovation and to drive decisions.
- Forge innovative partnerships. Collaborate with outside entities to generate new ideas and extend the organization's reach.
- Leverage technology. Invest in and utilize advanced technology to improve innovation capabilities and drive efficiency
- Invest in process improvement. Dedicate resources to refining existing procedures, creating an environment that fosters efficiency and supports innovation.
- Actively work with complexity partners. Seek out and engage with organizations that can help with complex innovation projects.
- Acquire innovative companies. Integrate smaller, innovative companies into the organization to bring in new ideas and capabilities.
- Seek small heroes. Identify and support individuals within the organization who are passionate about innovation and who are making a difference.
- Provide for innovation in job descriptions and compensation. Make innovation a core responsibility of all employees and reward them for achieving innovation goals.
- Support risk-oriented projects. Allow for experimentation and risk-taking to foster new ideas and creativity.
- Celebrate innovation efforts. Publicly acknowledge and reward innovative achievements to build a culture that values new ideas.
- Prioritize learning from experience. Actively seek out and learn from past successes and failures to improve innovation processes.
- Enact a "tactical to strategic transition". Move IT and other departments away from simply tactical execution to become more strategic drivers of innovation.
Execution Level
- Create a compelling sense of urgency. Make sure everyone in the organization understands the need for immediate action and innovation.
- Simply do things; act now. Encourage the team to start implementing ideas immediately rather than waiting for the perfect time, with analysis after the fact.
- Form fast teams. Assemble and empower quick-response teams to tackle specific challenges and opportunities.
- Rapidly transition-challenged product lines. Quickly adjust and reinvent underperforming product areas to meet changing market conditions.
- Ignite each spark. Empower employees by identifying and nurturing each individual's unique talents.
- Share big ideas. Create a culture of open communication where new concepts can be readily exchanged and explored.
- Be big on solving customer problems. Center all innovation efforts on meeting the needs of the customers.
- Focus on rapid time to market. Prioritize speed in bringing new products and services to market to remain competitive.
- Ensure internal collaboration. Foster a team-oriented environment that connects different parts of the organization for innovation.
- Provide for instant scalability. Design systems and operations that can be quickly adapted and expanded to accommodate rapid growth.
- Ingest fast ideas. Adopt a mindset focused on rapidly identifying, evaluating, and applying new concepts.
- Check speed for corporate agility. Monitor the speed and quality of innovation projects, ensuring that they are both fast and effective.
- Embrace the opportunities for innovation. Have an attitude that seeks out and welcomes all avenues for innovation and new ideas.
- Pursue relentless customer-oriented innovation. Constantly look for new ways to improve products and services to meet the expectations of customers.
- Spread R&D out. Make R&D responsibilities not just the domain of R&D departments, but rather something that is embraced by the whole organization.
Over the years, Futurist Jim Carroll has seen a lot of innovation success and a lot of innovation failure.