I was enjoying a café with a good friend, Edgar Papke, who is an amazing CEO coach regarding leadership and corporate culture. As we know, culture tends to stem from the top. We were talking about the challenges of building cultures of innovation, and it seems CEO’s know very little about this. Many CEO’s delegate “making the company more innovative” to their management team; usually to the head of HR, OD, Marketing and/or R&D. But these functional heads have been basically stuck on departmental techniques that haven’t moved the innovation needle much for years, beyond a few people making incremental product extensions. They too are at a loss on how to develop and scale cultures for innovation. I told Edgar that the design leadership function knows much about innovation, also at the department level, but with some processes that can be scaled, even to HR, OD, Marketing and R&D.
Welcome to our new blog – Innovation Culture.
The purpose is simple; to develop and share knowledge about the connections between innovation and corporate culture. Our intent is to help organizations better understand the emerging and scalable approach to innovation, which stems from design-driven innovation and design thinking methods, in order to help create cultures of innovation. Our point of view is that innovation must come from the top, bottom and center to take hold. So we are planning this blog to be like a five-way street; with input from Design and innovation, HR, OD, Marketing and R&D. To that end, we have selected an amazing group of thought leaders to be contributors to this blog, which includes:
Charles Bezerra, PhD, Director at ?WhatIf! Innovation, leading their office in Brazil, and author of The Humble Designer and The Innovation Machine.
Tamara Carleton, PhD, CEO and founder at Innovation Leadership Board LLC, and author of Playbook for Strategic Foresight and Innovation.
Jeanne Leidtka, PhD, Business innovation professor at Darden Business School, University of Virginia, and author Designing for Growth, and numerous other books and papers.
Thomas Lockwood, PhD, Recruiting consultant, past President of the Design Management Institute, and editor of Design Thinking, Corporate Creativity, Building Design Strategy, and The Handbook of Design Management.
Marty Neumeier, Director of Transformation at the Liquid Agency, and author of Metaskills, Designful Company, Zag, and Brand Gap.
Peter Norlin, PhD, Principle of Peter Norlin Change Guides, and past Executive Director of the Organization Development Network.
Bruce Nussbaum, Professor of innovation and design at Parsons The New School of Design, former Assistant Managing Editor and Editorial Page Editor for BusinessWeek, and author of Creative Intelligence.
Edgar Pakpe, consultant and author on business alignment and organizational culture and executive leadership, who he has delivered over 2,000 keynote speeches, presentations and workshops. Author of the upcoming book: True Alignment: Linking Company Culture to Customer Needs for Extraordinary Results.
Our framework for the blog will be centered on the organizational environment, including culture, alignment, process and platforms, and the people side. We plan to share this information with leaders of Design, Innovation, HR, OD, Marketing and R&D. An ambitious undertaking indeed, but one that we think can add value to many organizations in many ways to come.
We welcome you to join in developing these interesting conversations.