The New Book “Unpuzzling Innovation” Introduction Chapter 5 Digital Innovation Next Practices

The world is becoming more hyper-connect with the latest digital technology advancement. Digital innovation has a broader spectrum with hybrid nature; it is the incremental improvement-radical innovation continuum. Is it possible to integrate the innovative concepts into a comprehensive approach that can generate intelligent solutions to the seemly insurmountable large-scale problems? How to develop digital innovation best and next practices for managing innovation continuum in a structural way?
Knowledge and practices are relevant to innovation; doing more results in more opportunity for innovation: The essence of innovation is made of trying the new combination of known things. Innovation is a strategic choice. If you want to be an “innovative organization,” you shape your current business structure to match your current stack rank of areas where innovation will reap the most significant benefit. You never know how innovative you might be in some field before encountering the problems and before the adoption of solutions. Innovation is a discipline that if practiced well and understood fully, reads more like a blueprint than science fiction. Innovation is only a strategic choice if you are in possession of some “how-to”s. In addition, emphasizing that innovation is a journey enables people to pace themselves and recognize that innovation is not an on-off switch. There will be ups and downs on the way and you need the resilience to make the journey to completion.
Groom innovation leaders boldly, and develop employees entrepreneurially: To keep innovation alive in the organization, it’s necessary first assure your think tank that you are willing to make an investment with calculated risks. Encourage employees to do things and problem-solving in their own way to bring good results. It’s important to create an environment where people want to work, encourage brainstorming, and the top leaders inspire and respect of sharing ideas and collective insight, find the new stars and let them drive. If you could create a culture that nurtures creativity and innovation, you might be onto something, people will dare to be innovative as long as they know they won’t get penalized for a bad idea and get rewarded for a good one. Business innovation is bravery - it can take you to a whole other place.
There are two types of measurement of creativity: The problem for building a creative workplace is being able to create a measure that assesses the different dimensions of organizational creativity adequately. Generally speaking, there are two types of measurement: the first type of measurement of creativity in the workplace is through the results, the outcomes of creative thoughts and actions. The second type of assessment is through the innovation drivers, the elements that enhance an organization’s innovation capacity. There must be an appreciation for the organization of the sources of creativity as well as the structures and cultures that will promote innovation. Innovation Management in a workplace is a multi-dimensional pursuit.

It is really hard to be a consistently innovative company. It requires fine-tuning the organizational structure and culture that nurtures new ideas and is able to profitably execute on those ideas. It is also not easy to walk the talk, develop the best and next practices for experimenting and learning to facilitate both breakthrough innovation and continuous improvement and build innovation capability cohesively.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu