The innovation economy
Creativity and innovation are considered the keydrivers of economic prosperity. How can your business succeed in the innovation game? Detlef Reis previews his keynote speech and workshop.
Innovation and business creativity
In the past decade, humanity has entered a new economic age: the innovation economy. Creativity and innovation are now considered the key drivers of economic prosperity for companies, countries, and individuals alike.
This raises a series of interesting questions. How can we define creativity and innovation in simple terms? What factors drive and influence innovation and change nowadays? And how can we actually play and succeed in the innovation game?
These questions will be addressed in ‘The creative class’ and the related ‘X-IDEA innovation mini- workshop’. We will look at the topics of innovation and business creativity through different frames: the grand picture, the big picture, and the small picture.
The grand picture of innovation: the environment
The modern business environment constitutes the stage on which the innovation play takes place. We will learn about the advent of the innovation economy, the drivers and the cycles of change, and why the world hates change. These environmental factors set the opening scene in the keynote talk before we scale one level down.
The big pictures of innovation: key concepts
Now, we are ready for a big picture view. First, we define creativity and innovation in simple terms. We also discuss the importance of making meaning to move from invention to innovation, look at the wide spectrum of modern innovation types, and touch on the financial premium that innovation leaders enjoy.
But why do only a few companies succeed in the innovation game? The top innovators know how to use the full spectrum of innovation types, how to distinguish innovations based on impact, and have found ways to deal with the dilemma of innovation management and its paradoxes.
The small pictures of innovation: applications
Appreciating the big picture of innovation first gives everyone a foundational knowledge platform which allows to scale down to the lowest level
of abstraction. When we adopt a small picture view, innovation comes down to mastering four application areas: process, people, culture, and leadership:
- Leadership is the first small picture we will discuss. Just talking the innovation talk does not suffice. As Steve Jobs noted: “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” Companies that lead innovation in their industry not only have a creative leader at the top, but also creative people who creatively lead their teams on lower levels.
- Leaders influence the second small picture application that can make or break innovation: the organizational culture. How can organizations move from a copycat mentality to a creative culture? A good start is understanding which cultural factors empower creativity and innovation.
- The third small picture frame captures a critical dimension that closely relates to the first two: people. Who can best contribute to innovation, and how? Everyone can play a role, but depending on their preferred cognitive style, some people are better suited to create or lead innovation from the front, while others enjoy working on innovation at the back end of the process.
- The final small picture application is process,or in other words: how to better undertake an innovation project. We will briefly touch on how innovation processes and creativity tools work, and why they add value.
X-IDEA
In the subsequent workshop, we will get the chance to apply a systematic innovation method. X-IDEA is an awards-winning innovation method that can reliably help would-be-innovators produce standout ideas and outputs. Participants will form small innovation teams and take a practice case related to the pet industry through the five process stages of X-IDEA. First, delegates will learn how to correctly frame a pet innovation challenge.
Then, they will use a selection of creativity tools to generate raw ideas for their challenge. In the second creative stage, which is development, the teams will design some intriguing ideas into full-fledged idea concepts, which they will briefly evaluate in the evaluation-stage before pitching their top idea in the final action-stage.