reflections
Our Thoughts On Innovation For the Mission-Driven World
Direction: The Second Fertilizer
So in the last post, we discussed establishing structure. A poor structure can certainly hinder innovation progress, but you need more. One of the key things to establish is the direction of the organization. This helps people make the right decisions when they are needed, this is particularly true as you establish a structure that…
Structure: The First Fertilizer
Structure is the way to lay out how your innovation system operates within your organization; how to organize, staff, and manage it, if you will. While having a good structure in place can’t guarantee successful innovations, a poor structure can most certainly impede progress. An innovation system’s structure consists of several components: process, skills and…
4 Fertilizers for Mission-Driven Innovation
Innovation doesn’t have to miraculously occur. With the right ecosystem, an organization can tend to innovation much like a farmer tends to a crop. The organization’s managemen t can create and implement innovative ideas with regular success. To do this, they need some elements in place. We like to think of these elements as fertilizers.…
Innovation Fluency: How Organizations Intentionally Build Capacity to Innovate
How Fluent Is Your Organizational Innovation? And Where Do You Want It to Be? Innovation Fluency is an organization’s ability to intentionally understand, manage, and sustain innovation over time. Like learning a language, fluency has both breadth (how many people can “think or speak innovation”) and depth (how well they can use it to make…
Why Mission‑Driven Organizations Need to Innovate
As constituents and beneficiaries’ needs, funding models, community expectations, technology, and government policies evolve at unprecedented speed, mission-driven organizations face a simple truth: staying still is the fastest way to become irrelevant. Mission-driven organizations, especially nonprofits, associations, educational institutions, and local government agencies sit at the center of some of society’s most urgent challenges. They…
How To Make Innovation Intentional
Intentionality improves your success; Here’s How To Create It. In “How to Create an Innovative Mission-Driven Organization”, we discussed two things to make your organization more innovative: diversity of innovation and making innovation intentional. Our series “Innovation: It’s More Than Technology (Parts 1, 2, and 3)” discussed how you can diversify innovation by broadening your…
Innovation: It’s More Than Technology (Part 3)
To close out this series, we’ll look at a couple of other types of innovation and how innovations can be linked together with some ways to think about how to approach coming up with the ideas for actual innovations you may want to test and pursue. Let’s get started with… Experience Innovation As people interact…
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