If you’re not the creative type you might think that coming up with innovative ideas is the hard part of being an innovator, it really isn’t. Once you learn some of the tricks of creative thinking, brain storming and how to look at the world with a different set of lenses you will find that the ideas can really start coming pretty easy. The hard part of being an innovator is the implementation part of an innovative idea, now that really is the challenge. After my last big investment loss in a great “Idea” it occurred to me that there are far more great ideas than there are great managers to implement them. Sometimes we come under the spell of a great idea (like I did) and think that it's so great that it will just magically get implemented with angels singing and a soft warm tropical breezes at our backs. Unfortunately, that is not the case and most of the magic that brings an idea to reality is sheer muscle and hard work. Abraham Lincoln once said that, “labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor and could never have existed if labor had not first existed.
The ability to implement an innovation is as much a part of the innovation as the ideation and visualization piece. Once the excitement in the initial stages of the idea begin to wear off, we all have a tendency to be human and lose focus on the bigger picture or we can just get distracted by other urgent life and work issues. Overcoming our tendency for humanness requires some serious project management systems to be in place with a clear and actionable strategy and with clear and measurable goals and objectives. According to Jim Collins in his book “Good to Great” there needs to be a monomaniacal leadership that brings about the realization of a great idea. Innovation implement-ability is just the ability to see all the affected disciplines of an idea and change each of them in order to support the innovation. In other words, how will you finance the innovation, what monetary incentives and measurements need to be in place , who needs to lead the team, who should be on the team and who shouldn’t, how will you make the product and how will it affect other products and the competition? All this is just the mundane but oh so necessary innovation management piece of the formula that makes it all come together. So, go be an innovator with a tendency toward action and persistence and stop believing in magic!
The ability to implement an innovation is as much a part of the innovation as the ideation and visualization piece. Once the excitement in the initial stages of the idea begin to wear off, we all have a tendency to be human and lose focus on the bigger picture or we can just get distracted by other urgent life and work issues. Overcoming our tendency for humanness requires some serious project management systems to be in place with a clear and actionable strategy and with clear and measurable goals and objectives. According to Jim Collins in his book “Good to Great” there needs to be a monomaniacal leadership that brings about the realization of a great idea. Innovation implement-ability is just the ability to see all the affected disciplines of an idea and change each of them in order to support the innovation. In other words, how will you finance the innovation, what monetary incentives and measurements need to be in place , who needs to lead the team, who should be on the team and who shouldn’t, how will you make the product and how will it affect other products and the competition? All this is just the mundane but oh so necessary innovation management piece of the formula that makes it all come together. So, go be an innovator with a tendency toward action and persistence and stop believing in magic!
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