Enhance Positive Attitude

Every day, persuade your team to introduce 4 good habits that will elevate body, mind and soul. Look for the 4-way plan to enhance team work. • Ignite the positive field by lighting a fragrant agarbathi or aroma therapy diffuser. • The lack of resources forces us to innovate. Tough times help us to adapt. • Use only fresh vegetables. • Take care of yourself – physically mentally and emotionally

Understand the Innovation Process

It is very important to identify the challenges that face the company and ensure that the problems chosen have true strategic importance. If this step is ignored, organizational energy can be wasted on trivial issues. That is why the outcome of solving each problem should be carefully studied so that only high impact solutions are chosen. Identify a goal that creates excitement and energy. This could be a general goal and it can be refined later. The goal could be, ‘How to become a 1,000 crore company’, or ‘How to reduce costs by 50%’ or ‘How to create a Customer Fan Club’. Unless there is excitement and energy created around the initiative, a positive field, revolutionary change cannot take off. The slogan of that single unchanging word ‘Change’ defines the field created around Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. From being a rank outsider, he became the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate and the forty-fourth president of the US. The field is created by a clear, consistent, credible goal, shared by millions. It reminds everyone of Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream!’ or Gandhiji’s ‘Quit India!’ Creating a positive field around the idea is the most important first step in starting the innovation initiative. Enthusiasm, excitement and playfulness create a climate where creativity can germinate and innovation can branch into a productive sheltering tree. The study of how to create a positive field will be a life long endeavour. But today, consciously install the positive field in your mind and in the minds of your team.

Encourage Team work

There are a number of ways to include people and create commonness in creating a team there by encouraging the team work. • Share common goals • Speak common language • Undertake journey together • Talk about personal success and failure • Chant common prayers, mantras and exercise together • Share a common ‘shorthand’ of thinking • Enjoy and share common jokes give each other compliments • Affirm each other

The Innovation Spiral

The first step in developing an environment that nurtures creativity is to separate idea generation from analysis. Most business sessions do not yield too many breakthrough ideas because managers are too busy shooting down each other’s ideas. Such meetings produce boring, safe and often useless suggestions. So create an Innovation Spiral where members will feel safe to be open, inventive, and even silly. Playfulness and fun define this positive climate and is critical to the emergence of creative ideas as the new ideas being developed should be challenging. If all the emerging ideas are ones that you feel comfortable with, then these ideas are old and the team should challenge themselves further. Here are a few self-limiting obstacles to creative thinking: * The habit of self-censorship. * A lack of respect for others. * Adopting the status quo. * Assuming limitations, instead of possibilities.

Key Elements in an Innovation Initiative

The key elements in an Innovation Initiative a. Stimulating • Identifying people to be included in innovation initiative. • Help in selecting projects for creative problem solving. • Making available teams to work on projects. • Top management approval and support. • Development of game plan with time, cost and staffing parameters b. Nurturing • Officially recognize the teams and scope of activity Schedule presentation to top management. • Provide a budget Organize Innovation Symposiums. • Provide space and time for innovation spirals to meet. • Mentors to help solve organizational hassles. • Provide common facilities center c. Sustaining • Start a MINDSPOWER club to meet once a month. Give innovation awards. • Celebrate good ideas. Prepare reports and publish success stories. • Use the innovation club for self development. • Have a 52 -week program on innovation. • Persuade all to use Innovation Tools. d. Reinstating • Communicate results of Innovation Initiative. • Have annual awards for Best Teams. • Name Master Innovators. • Have a series of tests that can lead to learning sets of thinking tools. • Create an office for development of Innovation, with representation on the Board.

THE INNOVATION PROCESS

The greatest competitive advantage comes from out-innovating the competition. As Tom Peters put it, ‘Add 10 differentiations to every product or service every 60 days. Sounds impossible? Isn’t it tough? It is. But what are the options? Your competitors are not sitting still.’ Innovation is the ultimate human resource which can ensure the competitive advantage of companies. It is the use of creative thinking tools that can provide the edge required to face the challenge of globalization. Creativity may become essential for survival in the Indian context, where there is such a major limitation of resources. Today is the age of knowledge and innovation can take companies forward at the speed of thought. The process that leads to the moment of discovery, invention, creativity and innovation can be broken down into five parts: • Problem statement • Idea generation • Incubation • Analysis • Implementation

Innovation

Innovation deals with bringing in new methods and ideas resulting in required changes leading to successful innovation. The term innovate derives from a Latin word which means, ‘to renew’. Creativity and Innovation are different in principle. Creativity is the spark and Innovation is the fire in the fireplace which cooks and bakes. Planned innovation requires analysis, systems and hard work. Creativity is divided into four components: the creative person, the creative process, the creative product and the creative environment. Why Innovate? Innovation turns problems and inconveniences into profitable elements of a business. The mightiest of modern organizations have been built in a few short years through the power of information and the human mind. Helping to manage human imagination, to develop creative solutions, will be the secret of winners in the future. Innovation can be seen in every field and every sector. Corporations that adopt innovation as a way of life never need to compete. Theirs is the path where no one has gone before; the path which leads to untold success. ‘There are no limitations to the possibilities of the human mind. Microsoft’s only factory asset is the human imagination,’ Frank Moody.