Evergreen Leadership Blog

Creativity

The Innovation Imperative: Four Things to Foster Innovation in Organizations

The forces of change surround us and are unrelenting. Fiber optics allow us to move data at amazing speeds and the cost of storage has plummeted from a cool $300K for 1 gig in 1980, to virtually free today. In addition to the accelerating power of the internet, we see an explosion in the speed of change. It may be driven by technology but it touches all that we do.

We find ourselves in an environment in which disruption is the steady state. Responding to today’s environment requires us to think about business in a different light. Where innovation exists alongside optimization. Where we get comfortable with the joy of creating, the emotion of connecting, and the powerful output of networks and collaborations.

Keep reading to find out four ways to foster innovation within organizations. You won’t want to miss the section where I discuss bringing creativity into the workforce to build connections with current and future customers.

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Innovation

Why Embracing Failure is the Wrong Message

Face it: Failure stinks. No one I know likes it. And even the most successful and creative people I know, don’t celebrate things that turned out poorly.

Yet a mantra that has emerged in the last five years is to “celebrate” failure. Really? Celebrate?

While I get, on some level, the reasoning to encourage people to take a risk and actually “do something” – the notion of celebrating failure is not, what I believe, is in anyone’s best interest.

Learn about other behaviors that are detrimental to organizations, and discover what healthy behaviors your organization should consider adding.

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Creativity

Creative Organizations Do These 3 Things Well

Creativity does not just “happen” in innovative organizations. Creative organizations have a very different culture than their less creative peers. In these organizations, creative teams focus on different things than their non-creative counterparts. And on those teams, creative people cultivate and practice the skill of innovation and creativity.

Creative organizations are a culmination of the right actions at these three levels:

– A creativity nurturing culture
– Leaders who encourage creativity
– Individuals with the skill and the will to create.

In today’s post, I’m going to share some actions you can take at all three levels to encourage, support and reap the rewards of creativity in their organizations.

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Innovation

Five Mistaken Assumptions Business People Have about Creativity and Innovation

Continuing on with my exploration of innovation and creativity in the “workplace”, let me share some common myths I encounter as I talk about creativity in the business world and the role of leaders as creators. The notion clearly is dissonant to many who hold the prevailing belief that work is work and creativity is play or at best only for the arts. As I peel back what underlies this notion that creativity and business are integrated rather than disparate.

Here are some of the common beliefs that block creativity from business that are well worth a critical examination.

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Leadership

10 Ways to Flex and Grow Your Innovation Potential      

Are you an innovator? Chances are, you’ll reply NO quickly and emphatically. Innovators, you think, invent complicated things – like iPhones or driverless cars or drones. Or they toil for years to find that next big breakthrough in science, finding that previously unknown virus or a cure for a disease. Or you think innovation is about inventing things – rather than ideas, processes, and social advancement. And you probably think big: Madame Curie, Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, Jeff Bezos, and the like.

But I think each of us, as a member of the human species, has the potential to innovate. To find novel solutions to current problems. To find new ways to skin a cat (although I have no earthly idea why anyone would want to skin a cat).

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Challenges

The Problem with Problem Solving

Problem solving works great if there is a solution. Is awesome for technical problems. Is wonderful if what you had before needs a tune-up and not an overhaul. However, it does not work at all for situations which have no immediate fix, for which there is not a known solution and that requires new fresh thinking.

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