Is Your Organization Lacking the Key Catalyst to Successful Innovation?

by David Mears

If you think about it, your organization’s performance depends on its best ideas being turned into profitable products, projects, and customer relationships. In short, innovation is key to accelerating business results.

Executives want more innovation.Yet, executives at your company may be feeling frustrated by weak innovation. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers:

46% of executives say their companies’ strategies aren’t bold enough,¹ and
87% believe that there are major unexploited opportunities, that could make their companies market leaders, that have been overlooked.²

It’s no surprise that companies only deliver 50-60% of the financial performance that their strategies and sales forecasts promise.³

It’s NOT a creativity problem.Is this a creativity problem? In our experience, the answer is “No.”

Most companies and their employees generate plenty of excellent ideas — both big innovations (e.g., new products ideas) and “everyday innovations” (e.g., streamlined processes, incremental cost reductions, and improved customer satisfaction).

The real problem is that most of those great ideas don’t make it through the “innovation funnel,” from inception to successful implementation. They die a premature death, not because they’re weak or unworthy, but because they haven’t been communicated with credibility to the executives who must support, fund, and implement them.

The bottom line: Innovation is as much about communicating ideas with credibility as it is about creating those ideas.Is your organization struggling to innovate? Perhaps it’s not due to a lack of good ideas. Consider the possibility that you already possess all of the great ideas you need.

What’s holding you back might be an inability to effectively communicate and advocate for those ideas. Credible messaging could be the missing catalyst needed to transform your organization’s creative ideas into profitable innovations.

Are you looking for ways to accelerate innovation within your organization?
Learn about Mandel’s corporate training program: The Extraordinary Presenter^TM

_{¹http://www.strategyand.pwc.com/media/file/Strategyand_The-2012-Global-Innovation-1000-Study.pdf}
_{²http://www.strategyand.pwc.com/global/home/press/displays/c-suite-echo-chamber-strategy}
_{³http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/08/you-cant-do-strategy-without-input-from-sales}

David Mears

Formerly Chief Sales Officer at Mandel, David was responsible for the organization’s sales growth, as well as for key strategic global accounts. He is an expert in sales strategy development and execution and regularly consults with Fortune 500 companies about their sales strategy design and execution plans. Prior to his work with Mandel, David was an executive team member at BayGroup International, where he was involved in both internal and client-facing strategic project work. David has also held senior roles with Learning International.