Making Innovation Happen

The journey from idea to innovation is fraught with risks, uncertainty and ambiguity. This journey needs a lot of perseverance from the teams that work on such ideas. It also needs a lot of courage by the senior management to allow their teams comprising very capable people to work on such projects, the output of which is uncertain. Organizations are expected and designed to deliver on a consistent and predictable manner. Any adverse deviation from the predicted outcomes are punished by the investors. While business leaders and the board are keen that their company performs equally well on innovation, the pressure of short term results and fear of failure need leaders to be courageous to start this journey. The Book offers several ideas for the Board and Senior Leaders to induce and drive innovations. They include newer ways to incentivize ingenuity, including compensating executives across the board for nurturing creativity with a long term focus on execution. It also suggests creative yet pragmatic ways to make the innovation plan and its execution measurable, flexible and nimble. The book also seeks to unravel cultural nuances that can either significantly drive or impede inventiveness. It proposes several tips for the organizational practitioners to benefit from, and aims to enhance the innovation quotient from ideation to execution. Managers, CEOs and Board members of modern day organizations can draw useful insights from the many narratives the book provides. Written in the mold of a fictional novel set in a Socratic style of dialogues, the book reveals a mix of truths with myths and jubilation with tribulations, all in the interest of bringing newer perspectives and solutions to benefit the readers."