Kathy Harris

Enjoy the best of my blogs on KM and Innovation and look for more on this topic during the next 12 months:

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Many organizations are anticipating some improvement in economic conditions during the next 12-18 months. Executives and leaders are beginning to strategize and plan for how to move the businesses forward. They are considering whether they should continue to focus on cost optimization, turn their full attention to innovation and growth, or opt for some balance of the [...]

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People don’t commit to innovation just because it’s there. Sure, innovation is important to the organization and it is someone’s job, but is that really enough to cause employees to freely offer up their most creative thoughts and ideas? Probably not. Innovation succeeds best when supported by cultural actions that do, in fact, speak louder [...]

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In 2009, cultural change is a top of mind issue — establishing the right cultural foundation is a critical success factor in most key initiatives. But, “playing the culture card” can no longer excuse the failure to evolve cultural norms and behaviors to accept change. It is the responsibility of executive management to close these cultural gaps in their organizations. 
Just to give you a [...]

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Not all organizations are ready for innovation. I’ve advised a lot of people on how to launch an innovation program, but I haven’t really dealt with the back-story of whether their organization is ready to take on such an initiative. 
  
Let’s be clear. I’m not talking about the structural elements of innovation — things like business focus, a [...]

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Even if you follow another organization’s best practices or adopt an innovation expert’s process model, there’s no guarantee you’ll achieve the stellar results you’re hoping for. Two organizational variables, culture and personality, account for most of the differences in outcomes, especially in IT innovation. These variables are unique to each organization and they influence success [...]

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You may not have a formal innovation management program, but that doesn’t mean you’re not innovating. And, it doesn’t mean you need to start an innovation program.
Innovation is all around and it seeps into every organization through employees, industry changes, technology and more. With many of these innovations, you actively consider their applicability to your [...]

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My personal research agenda aims to help organizations invest in innovation and manage it well. Here’s a sampling of recent research:
“Idea Management: Make These Decisions First” — ideas are the first step toward innovation and amazingly, we don’t handle this well. We need to think about idea generation as a process: Imagine what success will look like — hundreds [...]

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