It sounds simple: Organizations that want to be innovative must encourage innovative thinking of their employees. In practice, however, many companies fail in building an innovative environment. It is not the lack of necessary resources of creativity that cause the failure, it is the lack of management capability. Specifically, it is the lack of the ability to transform new ideas into values.
Inovation means doing things in new ways so that it brings economic value. That includes skills needed to solve business problems and fulfill customer needs in new ways that will bring profit. Managers can learn the skills through practice and achieve mastery in them. The fundamental innovation skills fall into three categories:
Discovery skills
These are the skills needed to understand the emotional, economic and practical needs and creating new ways to achieve them. They start with understanding customer needs on the basis of which proposals for new products and services are made. It is also a lateral way of thinking which means creating several possible solutions. Unlearning to judge others' ideas and stay open to them is the key leadership skill in this case.
Implementation skills
After the concept for a new solution, your project plan and execution comes. Since innovative projects involve more uncertainty than other projects, they also require a different management approach. Key skills include the ability to manage uncertainty by means of controlled experiments, using feedback from the project to explore new possibilities and manage mental issues in innovative teams.
Leadership skills
Corporate leaders must learn how to ensure accountability of project managers for the management of innovative projects, not only for their results. It means creating an environment in which managers are completing their projects on time within their budgets and they are able to learn from experience.
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