Constant Innovation Driving Organic Growth

How does a business take its innovation strategy beyond the "eureka" moment, and create sustainable growth? Go beyond the one-off disruptions that many companies become well known for. Formulate a dynamic process of continually creating new business models, improving the customer experience, opening new markets, launching new products, and creating a culture of innovation.

The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania is offering a unique program to drive innovation at your business beyond one-offs, and help you create a complete process for creating constant innovation: Full-Spectrum Innovation: Driving Organic Growth. The program offered from June 25-June27 at Wharton will help you:

* Better target innovation resources to achieve the most impact.
* Develop a broad view of organizational innovation.
* Gain a toolkit of diverse approaches and best practices for encouraging innovation.
* Rethink the "innovation DNA" to design and lead innovation across the organization.

My observations on how innovations are created at the Top 20 Innovators of The Innovation Index had led me to create the following five principles for successful innovation:

1. Vision to create new products, business models or processes that make a difference and create new markets
2. Systematic processes and rigor that stimulate creativity and learning to execute on the vision
3. Reward and recognition system for teams to take measured risks, experiment, and assess
4. Focus on clear and present customer needs, the market facts, and the intangible
5. Growth-oriented leadership that is decisive, inclusive, focused, takes risks, and has market expertise

"The Wharton program's workshop approach offers hands-on experience in defining and implementing innovation in an organization. As part of a cohort of innovation leaders from around the world, attendees will have inside access to the latest best practices - from innovative companies such as P&G and Southwest Airlines (two of the Top 20 Innovators on The Innovation Index). As well as research from Wharton's Mack Center for Technological Innovation, which leads one of the largest ongoing research projects on managing emerging technologies,” says Michael McTigue, Director of Communications at Aresty Institute of Executive Education, The Wharton School.

The program offers interaction and dialog with thought-leaders including George Day and Paul Schoemaker; ability to learn and experiment with new innovation frameworks from Larry Huston, former vice president of innovation at Procter & Gamble and the creator of their celebrated "Connect and Develop" strategy; and mine the value of blogs and search engines in the "Innovation in Cyberspace" panel discussion, featuring front-line innovators from Southwest Airlines and influential bloggers.

In particular, McTigue emphasizes, "Readers are now organizing themselves around topic areas at a grassroots level, sharing ideas, and offering constructive criticism. Blogs including "Creativity and Innovation Driving Business" are an invaluable forum for innovation leaders who want to create cultures of innovation in their organizations."

McTigue promises a great experience: “Our faculty members will provide perspectives on developing a market-driven strategy, understanding new product development successes and failures, improving "peripheral vision" to sense emerging opportunities, and engaging in value innovation to capitalize on new market space.”

It is great to see The Wharton School leading this paradigm, and offering pertinent executive education on Innovation that includes today’s latest technology drivers. Strategy leaders, managers of new businesses, chief innovation officers, chief technology officers, and product development leaders responsible for driving top-line growth, and promoting and delivering innovation would definitely want to attend this program.

Innovation Bloggers Virtual Forum on April 26, 2007

Jeff De Cagna of the Principled Innovation is hosting the first of its kind, The Innovation Bloggers Virtual Forum on April 26, 2007. It was humbling and an honor when Jeff also invited me to participate in this forum with leading thinkers and innovators (I will be participating in the afternoon forum)

The first 20 Bloggers who comment on this post will be invited to attend this engaging virtual forum.

The Innovation Bloggers Virtual Forum

When: April 26, 2007
Time: 11:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m., Eastern Daylight Time
Where: Online and Audio Conference
Register: Post your comments to this post. First 20 Bloggers are in.
Details:

“Innovation is now recognized as the single most important ingredient in any modern economy.”

–The Economist

Innovation continues to be a top priority for leaders in all sectors of the global economy, yet actually making innovation happen remains a profound challenge for many organizations. What’s more, the new dynamics of a rapidly-changing, Web-enabled global marketplace are shifting how we think about innovation itself.

If you would like to better understand the current state of innovation thinking and practice, as well as the emerging trends that will shape the future of innovation, join some of the Web’s top innovation bloggers for the first-ever Innovation Bloggers Virtual Forum on April 26, 2007.

The Forum line-up as of right now:

Morning Forum Roundtable (11 am EDT)

Renee Hopkins Callahan, IdeaFlow
Chuck Frey, InnovationTools
Jeffrey Phillips, Innovate on Purpose
Dave Pollard, How to Save the World

Afternoon Forum Roundtable (2 pm EDT)

Dominic Basulto, Endless Innovation
Sanjay Dalal, Creativity And Innovation Driving Business
Mark McGuinness, Wishful Thinking
Joyce Wycoff, Heads Up! on Organizational Innovation

Jeff De Cagna, Principled Innovation, Moderator

If you’re interested in participating in the Forum (it’s totally free!), you have to be one of the first 20 commenters below to secure your invitation! If you’re a blogger and are willing to help us promote the Forum on your blog, besides the opportunity to attend and engage, I will also update this post to include your Blog. Please be sure to provide a link back to this post in your comment.

This is a unique opportunity to participate in two outstanding conversations involving many of the blogosphere’s smartest innovation thinkers and practitioners. I hope you will be able to join us!