Innovation and You
There's no denying innovation is important. You often see startups oozing with innovation completely disrupt a market and consequently, there are tons of people out there with dreams to do the same thing. How do you jack up the innovation level in your company? Why is it that startups seem to be so much better at innovating even though multi-million dollar companies have the people and financial resources to throw at R&D? Why do big companies suck at innovating?
The answer starts with your employees. Empowering your employees to innovate and embedding innovation in the work culture is key to ensuring your company continues to innovate. With big companies, the focus moves from innovation to profit maximization. Over time though, some small team of highly innovative individuals are going to find a way to do it differently or do it better, and the big players will take a hit.
Where does your company sit in the world of innovation? Does innovation come from a select few individuals?
Articles
- Driving Innovation: This article is all about how to truly drive innovation in your company: It doesn't come from one person, but rather many people. Arne Sorenson shares five tips for trying to drive innovation among his team members. Coincidentally, my colleague Tayfun actually wrote an innovation piece on a similar topic earlier this week.
- Are Headphones the New Cubicle?: I thought this post by Richard Moran was pretty interesting and at least worst asking yourself the question (even if you don't feel like reading the article). Open offices are seemingly the new way to go, but are the benefits of open offices reduced by everyone strapping headphones on? I'm personally a big fan of having an open concept office, but I do think that open communication factor is significantly hurt by having headphones on all day.
- How to Spot a Great Leader in Four Easy Steps: James Caan says that great leaders are defined by four major things: confidence, intuition, decisiveness, and empathy. I have to agree. People need a leader they can get behind and trust to make good decisions. That leader needs to show confidence when they are making their decisions to really show that they aren't blindly leading people down path X. However, the empathy part goes really far. After all, you're dealing with real live people, not machines.
- Intrapreneurship – Guest Blog by Tayfun Uzun: I've already briefly mentioned it here in this post, but my colleague Tayfun from Magnet Forensics wrote his perspective on intrapreneurship and how it drives innovation. It's all about empowering each individual in the company to be innovative in their own right, and in return, the company itself experiences a boost in innovation. Check it out!
- University of Waterloo Grad’s Journey To Becoming A Software Engineer: Here's the part where I toot my own horn a bit. A friend of mine, Meghan Greaves, did a mini-interview with me for a TalentEgg article. It's about how and when I knew what I wanted to do when I "grew up", what university in Waterloo was like for me, and my transition into a development leadership role at Magnet Forensics. It was really flattering to have Meghan put this together, so please check it out and give her a shout out on twitter!
- New Generation of Business: Connecting Employee Loyalty with Customer Loyalty: In this post by Colin Shaw, he dives into the concept of employee ambassadors and how you can build a better business by marrying employee and customer loyalty. Keeping employees engaged through your employee ambassadors will help keep the rest of your employees engaged and believing in the company's mission.
- Just Do it – Right from the Start!: Michael Skok provides a high-level walkthrough for startup success. The first thing? The right people. A successful company absolutely requires the right people and that's where it starts. Keeping a solid workplace culture and empowering your employees are two fundamental things to do as you bring the right people on board. Great article!
- Look for Advisors Who Can Teach, Not Tell: Hunter Walk shares some advice that certainly makes sense for advisory boards, but I wouldn't limit it to just that. The idea of being able to teach and not just tell is a parallel to great leadership. Telling people what to do is not as effective as telling people what the goal is and empowering them to get there. It's much easier to learn and grow if you're given guidelines but you get to hold the reins.
- Using Humor in Business: Some Practical Advice: Colin Shaw is up again this week with an article on humour in business. I think it's pretty common that when people think of big corporations they have this vision of straight-faced people in suits carrying brief cases... but is that always the reality? Should it be the reality? Colin talks about how you can leverage humour in the workplace for things such as improving relationships or making ideas more memorable. There's certainly a balance, but I think Colin doe sa great job explaining it.
- The # 1 Job of a Leader Is ...: If you have grammar OCD then skip to the next link right now. Fair warning! Tom Hood says that to be a true leader, you need to be doing "more better". What does it mean? It's simple... do better, only more! Okay, maybe it still sounds kind of strange, but the idea still applies. In order to be a real leader in your domain, you have to keep doing better. You need to innovate, push boundaries, and keep doing things better. Do better than your competitors, and do better than you did in the past.
- 5 Lessons On How to Build High Impact Teams: Jake Wood talks about what it takes to make a high impact team. What are some of the ingredients? First, you need to know your role and how you fit in with your team. You need to embrace innovation and change. And of course, one of my favourites, "Passion trumps talent, but culture is king".
- Why Your Software Development Process Is Broken: In this article by Joe Emison, discusses where control in software products lies and how shifting it between developers and high-level managers can have different effects. On one hand, developers with too much control start to stick in all the fancy new technology because developers love new shiny things, and on the other hand high-level managers create a one-way flow of direction down to developers. His solution is to have a benevolent dictator that lies somewhere in the middle.
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