How to Tell If Innovation Matters to Your CEO - Getting to the root of the Problem The problem is that while the eyes of the CEO are fixed on innovation, the body of the organisation may not be following. The ‘antibodies’ that inhibit innovation include a culture that sees it as separate from the mainstream operations of the business and is slow to commercialise new ideas. And, the survey proves the authors are correct – or that the authors actually cared about what the executives said. Over 57% of the executives referred to culture as one of the top three barriers to innovation. That’s more than 13 percentage points over the second barrier, which is strangely “strong visionary business leadership”. You’d think that in the second case the executives would be pointing the finger at themselves. If you see that the CEO and senior leaders are working on reducing uncertainty and risk, realigning compensation and rewards schemes, focusing their time and commitments around innovation, encouraging new ideas, balancing the need for efficiency with the need for creativity, then there’s a good chance that innovation will flourish. If the CEO and others talk about innovation but don’t do much to mitigate a culture based on efficiency, repeatability and reducing risk and uncertainty, then either they don’t understand the impact that culture has on innovation (best case) or do understand and simply don’t have the time or energy to change the culture (worst case). My comment: We so often see innovation listed in the top values of many companies and organisations, and some even have it in their names. But I have yet to really see innovation in action. I've seen it stifle and die out yes. Actually no, I did see it in action once briefly. It was born in an organisation I worked in and a short while after it was born, the then Chief Operations Officer folded into an Ops Forum Meeting, and that is where it ceased to… http://bit.ly/2mBgIpO
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