How To Farm Lightning: Sustainable Innovation

How to Farm Lightningâ"¢: Sustainable Innovation
Every manager knows that â€OEinnovationâ€� is key to business success, and that those who don't innovate perish. Yet there is surprisingly little guidance available on how we should innovate â€" or even on what â€OEinnovationâ€� really means. Is it just about turning out new product features in an endless search for market differentiation? Or is innovation about rethinking every aspect of the way we do things â€" a kind of perpetual revolution that sows confusion and destroys certainty?
This two-day workshop gives a comprehensive overview of innovation, from leading business theories to specific tips and tools for making the organisation more innovative on a sustainable basis.
The workshop presents innovation as a dynamic business force that can be accessed, channelled and applied by anyone who chooses to exploit it. The emphasis is on practical techniques with case studies and team exercises throughout. Participants will take away an approach they can immediately apply in their organisations.


Course Objectives

• Understand the major theories and types of innovation
• Extend the innovation envelope to include customers & partners
• Create repeatable processes to deliver continuous innovation
• Manage innovation processes and assess status & outcomes
• Connect innovation with leadership
• Exploit sources of competitive edge
• Create an environment that nurtures innovation
• Embed innovation within business processes

Who will the Course benefit?
Decision-makers and those charged with innovating from any function and looking to improve the innovation capabilities of their team, business unit or company.


Course Duration
2 days


Course Content
Day One
Understanding Innovation
-Â Identifying the pressure to innovate
-Â Assessing the competitive environment and calibrating clock-speed
-Â Tracking decay in existing markets and solutions
-Â Relating innovation to leadership
-Â Aligning innovation and strategy
Learning from Winners - and Losers
-Â Extracting key behaviours of leading corporate innovators
-Â Tracing the lifecycle of innovations
-Â Analysing success and failure factors
-Â Creating an organisational narrative of innovation

Defining Innovation
-Â Applying the standard theories of innovation
-Â Managing the relationship between creativity and risk
-Â Comparing evolutionary and disruptive innovation
-Â Choosing between proprietary and modular architectures
-Â Building an innovation process from concept to delivery
Tapping Sources of Innovation
-Â Spotting the seven sources of innovative opportunity
-Â Acquiring and using customer insight
-Â Managing customer-led change
-Â Harnessing creative talents
-Â Evaluating options for investment
Releasing Creativity
-Â Learning to be creative
-Â Unlearning uncreativity
-Â Building and running an ideas factory
-Â Analysing the innovation fulcrum


Day Two
Searching the Opportunity Space
-Â Using K-cycles and S-waves
-Â Finding the forces underlying change
-Â Tolerating ambiguity and detecting its opportunities
-Â Letting go of what works
-Â Seeing for yourself and probing common knowledge

Introducing Innovations to Market
-Â Designing total solutions
-Â Creating pull markets
-Â Controlling connected markets
-Â Choosing launch windows
-Â Outpacing imitators
-Â Turning first-mover advantage into sustained leadership
Modelling Innovation's Role in the Organisation
-Â Relating R&D to innovation
-Â Outsourcing the innovation process
-Â Building coalitions for change
-Â Permissioning the organisation to innovate
Institutionalising Innovation
-Â Overcoming organisational hurdles
-Â Aligning values with organisational culture and personal motivation
-Â Evaluating and redesigning business processes
-Â Selecting and deploying tools
-Â Designing metrics, reward systems and management intervention strategies




PL2376 - How to Farm Lightning.pdf