Why The Chief Financial Officer Must Lead Organizational Innovation

My research over the last decades shows organizations have spent substantial sums on building creativity and innovation capabilities, motivating employees to participate, only to see their innovation investment come to very little. Organizational anecdotes abound about exciting ideas with strong leadership support reaching the point of final decision making only to see them blocked for a whole series of reasons - personal and organizational risk aversion, political agendas, weak and indecisive leadership. IT departments called upon to facilitate innovation as a way of saving costs struggle with stultifying technological infrastructure along with the other 100 projects they are currently building and the rhetoric of the continual improvement acolytes ensuring organizations maintain their business as usual approach. The list for "why not" is endless. My observations suggest there is another less obvious reason. Innovation in many instances fails not because of any lack of intention rather there is

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Launching the Management Innovation Index - Benchmarking Innovation Capabilities

As a senior leader in your organization. this is an invitation to an exclusive webinar launch of Version 3 of the Management Innovation Index (the MIX). Innovation in 21st century is now divided into 3 segments - incubators, start-ups and medium to large organizations - each requiring different types of innovation thinking skills. The main challenge for medium to large size organizations is how to grow through their own innovation capabilities. Most medium and larger organizational innovation efforts still start with idea generation. This approach ignores critical organizational skills, practices and capabilities required for innovation success. It also materially reduces the chance of success. The Management Innovation Index (the MIX) addresses this critical gap using clear metrics and actionable recommendations. Launched 7 years ago, the Management Innovation Index has collected over 22,000 pieces

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The World of Creativity Conferences and their Vital Role in Global Learning

Creativity conferences are now some of the longest annually occuring live learning events globally. The US Creative Problem Solving Institute Conference is in its 59th consecutive year; the American Creativity Association Conference is in its 25th consecutive year; the South African Creativity Foundation Conference is in its 19th consecutive year and CREA, Sestri Levante Italy and Mindcamp in Toronto, Canada are just babies starting out with only 10 consecutive years each under their belts. There is a reason for this phenomenon. Creativity conferences deliver to adults creative learning experiences years of formative education failed to deliver and continues to fail to deliver. Unlike academic conferences

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