Kathy Harris

• Are your current processes, products or services optimized or reasonably so? Innovation doesn’t require perfection, but these do need to be tuned and resilient enough to absorb the change introduced by innovation.
• Do you have the capability to assess the impact of a new process, product, etc. on those already in place? Without solid analytics or sophisticated analysis to determine if new products will decrease revenue or diminish the marketability of current products, you may create problems with even the best ideas.
• Is innovation the right answer for the vexing challenge you’re facing? Innovation probably won’t fix existing processes or problems.
• Finally, will your organization’s culture – its values and “way of life” — allow innovation to succeed? Innovation flourishes in a culture of collaboration, knowledge sharing, crisp decision-making and acceptance of change.

So, what should you do if your organization is not ready for innovation? The simple answer is to start with improvement and optimization – call this an “incremental innovation” initiative if you need. Once you can answer “yes” to these readiness questions, you are likely to have cut costs, optimized products, improved processes and best of all, established the culture and platform for innovation.  

Please let me hear from you on this – are these the right questions to determine organizational readiness for innovation? What would you add or change?