Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire

Chapter 3. Setting a Course Blindfolded: GOAL BLOCKAGES

The Key Dangers

• People are not really clear on how they can contribute to our innovation strategy.

• People are not really sure what to focus on in order to execute our innovation strategy.

• It seems like a lot of our innovation efforts are random and inefficient.

• Our innovation strategy is too broad and not really relevant to me.

• People are not really sure how to tell whether we are achieving our innovation strategy.

Overview

Just as managers and employees need goals to know what to focus on and to help them be successful, organizations need innovation goals too. Clear innovation goals, when combined with a clear innovation strategy and a single-minded innovation vision for the organization, will maximize the instinctual innovation that emerges from employees and the intellectual innovation that occurs on directed innovation projects.

Let's take a look at the importance of innovation goals and how to set them. In Appendixes A and B you'll find a customer permission analysis approach and visual frameworks that may also help you come up with your innovation strategy and goals.

The Purpose of Innovation Goals

While an innovation vision determines the kinds of innovation that are appropriate to an organization, and an innovation strategy determines what the organization will focus on when it comes to innovation, it is the innovation goals that break things down into tangible objectives that employees can work toward. Let's look at Procter ...