Defining the
Innovation Opportunity
A Message to Chief Executive Officers
As the Chief Executive Officer, no doubt you are being deluged with ideas from your leadership team as to guarantee your company's prosperity. Unless you have an extraordinary group of managers, they are promoting solutions from their particular field of expertise:
- Your Finance manager says to downsize, manage productivity, cut costs, and maximize ROI.
- Your Human Resource manager suggests that people are the most valuable asset and should be treated as an investment, not an expense.
- Your Education/Training professionals espouse that the company must be converted to a learning laboratory.
- Your Chief Information Officer says that investing in the technology infrastructure is fundamental to your competitive future.
- Your Intelligence manager tells you that your competition includes companies you haven't considered in your competitive analysis.
- Your Alliance manager tells you that only through collaborative ventures can you effectively grow the business.
- Your chief Quality officer says that you have an opportunity to win the Baldridge Award if you and the full leadership make the commitment to quality initiatives.
- Your R&D officer says that without research investments commensurate with the industry norms, your company will not have the products and services to compete in the future.
- Your Chief Engineer says that you must undergo cross-functional, simultaneous development processes.
- Your Manufacturing officer explains that the company must become more 'agile' (i.e., flexible in its processes along the entire value-chain).
- Your Marketing manager says that the strategic plan is not the goal; the planning process is the route to effective business strategy formulation.
- Your Public Relations/Communications expert says that you must align your progressive messages in a systematic campaign across multiple media.
- Your Sales executives say that your products and services are not reaching the marketplace in a timely matter nor at competitive prices.
- Your Service managers describe the difficulty of being at the end of the food chain when - in fact - they are closest to the needs of the customers and should be utilized accordingly.
Meanwhile, your competition seems to be able to bring ideas to market as a faster speed and with greater quality than do you. Your Suppliers are trying to provide advice because their success is dependent upon your own. Your customers want to remain loyal, but are having difficulty lobbying on your behalf inside their own companies.
They may all be right because these notions represent the current thinking in their respective professions as well as the realities of the hypercompetitive marketplace. But, what do you do? Where is the commonality in their observations? What is the fundamental core which brings each one to the boardroom with their 'complementary competencies'? How might you harness their expertise in ways which ensure the profitable success of your own firm? The answer:
Innovation Strategy!
With the ten Knowledge Innovation® modules, enterprises are able to bring together the diverse perspectives and leverage the diverse expertise of your leadership team.
We look forward to helping you achieve leadership through innovation and exploitation of knowledge.
Sincerely,
Debra M. Amidon
Founder and Chief Strategist, ENTOVATION® International
© ENTOVATION® International 1996. All rights reserved.
How one company has done this - see "Analog Devices invests in Intellectual Assets", in Knowledge Inc. June 1996. For details on Knowledge Inc. contact Britton Manasco at manascob@aol.com
For further information on how ENTOVATION®
International can help your organization, please contact:
Debra M. Amidon
email: debra@entovation.com
Tel: +1 508 988 7995
In Europe contact:
David Skyrme
email: david@skyrme.com
Tel: +44 1635 551434
