Companies must innovate or they will die! Today, it is critical for companies young and mature, large and small to innovate. Innovation comes from your people, with a passion for undertaking new ideas, new products, new markets, in new ways. At IPS we work with a lot of larger, more mature companies, and we are seeing many of them starting to deploy methods of innovation that sets them apart from their competition, attracts the best employees, and builds company value.
So who should you hire for this role? Harvard Business Review posted a blog “Don’t Hire Entrepreneurs; Hire Entrepreneurial Spirit”, which highlights some key things to look for when hiring your company innovators. The article gives great examples of creating “innovation time”, similar to companies like Google and 3M, to allow employees to continue developing skills in their own areas of interest, while still ensuring that their main focus is the company’s goals and future.
As another example, Nordstrom’s, not necessarily known in the past for its lean, agile innovation techniques, recently built an innovation lab that allows realtime innovation on the floor with customers. Watch this video!
© chanpipat – Fotolia.com
