Leadership, Management and Innovation

Think about the boxes we put ourselves into through the assumptions we make every day. In a rush to make timely decisions, to meet inflexible deadlines, or to maximize our limited time, we default to recognizable patterns for our solutions. You know what works. So, you follow the path of least resistance and get the job done. Objective achieved. Metric checked off. Move on to the next task

If you’re crossing the street or cooking a meal, established patterns are a great benefit. You don’t have to think when the light turns red. You don’t question a recipe that calls for 2 cups of whatever. But, dozens of other creative opportunities slip past you every day – opportunities that might result in very different outcomes if you could break habitual thinking patterns. You could be missing numerous alternative ideas. You could potentially

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Burt Rutan cited crisis as the primary reason for U.S. successes in the space race of the 1960s and 70s. Fear that foreign satellites could control outer space created a sense of urgency that resulted in rapid and far reaching innovations. One out of every thousand U.S. patents belongs to NASA. The agency holds over 1,400 aeronautical patents alone. Innovations impacted society as a whole as consumer products adopted and integrated these patents.

Putting humans into space required broad design thinking – an ability to grok the entire issue and integrate diverse resources and processes into a single effective system. Success required far more than constructing a rocket. It involved innovation throughout the entire supply chain, ground support system, life support system, global tracking system, training system, public relations system and many others.

More opportunity more than crisis

Ray Anderson, CEO of Interface, Inc. and self-described radical industrialist, views global warming as a crisis of even greater proportion. But he sees it as an opportunity more than a crisis.

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Kenneth D. Makovsky, contributor to My Three Cents: “Innovation: Our Competitive Edge” recently interviewed Randall Kempner, vice president for regional innovation at the Council on Competitiveness. Mr. Kempner referenced Dr. Richard Florida. If you wish to learn more about Florida and his ideas on the emerging creative class, I recommend three video interviews. Florida’s personality on video is far more compelling than his books (which are convincing by themselves).

Video Interviews:

The Emerging Economy - Rise and Migration of The Creative Class

The Flight of the Creative Class: The New Global Competition for Talent

Managing for Creativity (with Dr. Jim Goodnight of SAS)

The following commentary was written by Shelly Stalnaker, Business Intelligence Editor at BetterManagement.com:

"Best" can be a matter of perspective. The "best" doughnut, the "best" vacation spot, the "best" movie—all of these are judgment calls, based on personal preference, bias, needs, resources and so on. So when do you know you've got the "best" processes, strategies and infrastructure for your business intelligence requirements?

Every organization has room for improvement and change. In fact, if you're not periodically evaluating your company's opportunities for performance improvement, you're letting competitive advantage and market differentiation slip right through your fingers. Might as well start mailing checks to your competition.

That's not to say it's easy. As the old saying goes, "If it were easy, everyone would do it." But it is necessary.

To help you along in the process, BetterManagement.com offers several great learning opportunities. Section 4 of the free Learning Series Smart and Smarter: The Advantage of Business Intelligence is now available. This section, imaginatively titled Best Practices in Business Intelligence, offers six compelling articles and four webcasts, all focused on helping you discover what you should (or shouldn't) be doing.

See additional Webcasts and Articles on Business Intelligence.

Wikipedia defines Knowledge Management (or KM) as “an approach to improving organizational outcomes and organizational learning by introducing into an organization a range of specific processes and practices for identifying and capturing knowledge, know-how, expertise and other intellectual capital within the organization, and for making such knowledge assets available for transfer and reuse across the organization.”
Deming coined the phrase Information Revolution to identify the incredible range of systems and processes organizations were developing to capitalize on the oceans of data being collected. The goal of the systems and processes was to make sense of it - to turn the data into usable information - intelligence. Then, use that intelligence for competitive advantage by anticipating market trends, opportunities, exploit competitor weaknesses, etc.
An organization’s information evolution involves its integration of knowledge across departments, divisions and geographical boundaries. The fully integrated organization should be able to align goals, budgets, physical and human resources to improve performance and flexibility.
That’s one view of knowledge management. Ross Mayfield, a Palo Alto, California serial entrepreneur sees it backwards. Manage Knowledgement, as he terms it, makes sense, in a sense.

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