InnoQuotient – We assess the Innovation Culture

The myths of innovation in light of the data

Anna Lleonart — Wed, 07 Jun 2023 11:34:25 +0000

We share an excerpt from the article written by Fran Chuan, Jay Rao and David Cerdá for Harvard Deusto Business Review.

The first step in innovation is to overcome certain debilitating myths, and the clearest way to do this is by using objective data instead of following hunches or preconceived notions.

A lot has been written and will be written about innovation. Many organizations make enormous efforts to achieve outcomes that provide different responses to existing problems or needs; yet the results are often disappointing. The problem frequently lies in the fact that those results remain in limbo: talked about, but not acted upon. The truth is that there can be no innovation without rolling up your sleeves and getting to work, and it can’t be done without affecting – to a greater or lesser degree – a company’s culture, its leadership and, perhaps, its strategy.

For many leaders, innovation remains a mysterious concept, something they would like to achieve, without even knowing how to define it or put it into action at their organizations. There are undoubtedly many executives who are confused by official verbiage on the topic (one of its hallmarks is the complex “R+D+i” equation, which covers too much and doesn’t reflect reality) or by myths that create misunderstandings and prejudices. At any rate, there are many who would like to meet their business or executive targets in this area. We know that our views and theories determine our behavior. It is therefore worthwhile to not only dismantle some of the myths, but also do so based on objective data, which is the only trustworthy source when it comes to making professional decisions.

To undertake this task, we are going follow a model for the assessment of corporate culture when faced with the challenge of innovation that was created by Dr. Rao and Dr. Weintraub, professors at Babson College, which was printed in an article in MIT Sloan Management Review1. This tool represents a unique platform and point of reference for assessing culture in the face of innovation, given that the model has been endorsed by over 500 real business cases2, thereby creating a valuable database from which to draw conclusions and establish action plans.

Read the article in Harvard Deusto Business Review.

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Innovation and Culture: Two Sustainable Advantages

Anna Lleonart — Wed, 17 May 2023 09:50:02 +0000

Very few products, services, business models or technologies provide a sustainable competitive advantage. In the 1960s, an average Fortune 500 firm lived for an average of 60 years. Today, that number is down to about 30 years. An in-depth study of 4,700 publicly traded firms’ performance post 1980s, 1990s and 2000s recessions showed that 17% of them went bankrupt or bought or went private. 80% of them never recovered to their original growth rates prior to the crises. Only 9% succeeded very well and performed above their industry peers.

The winners had a culture that demonstrated the ability to reinvent, and they used innovations that changed their game in the market. The combination of both innovation and culture is more sustainable. Incremental and radical innovations are the result of two key capabilities – continuous improvement (kaizen) and continuous experimentation (kaiku). Does your firm have resources, processes, values, and the climate to master both incremental and radical innovations? Culture is an amalgam of both the firm’s hardware side (business) and the software side (emotional) of the enterprise.

Does your firm have the innovation culture to build a deep sustainable competitive advantage?

To help firms develop this capability, InnoQuotient, the Culture of Innovation assessment platform was developed nearly a decade ago. InnoQuotient allows enterprises to know the accelerators and detractors of innovation inside their culture. It demonstrates where they stand in terms of their innovation values, behaviors, climate, resources, processes and metrics. It helps executives to clearly define action plans and to accelerate projects to achieve their innovation goals.

The InnoQuotient model was published in the Sloan Management Review in 2013.

For more information, please contact InnoQuotient.

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When and why conduct a new assessment of your organisation’s innovative culture?

Anna Lleonart — Wed, 22 Mar 2023 12:50:13 +0000

Culture is usually blamed for the lack of innovation in any enterprise. But, is your enterprise ready for innovation? Do you know your enterprise strengths and weaknesses – people, processes, metrics, values, behaviors and climate? InnoQuotient assessment exposes your bright spots and road blocks. It will help executives to understand your enterprise’s cultural reality. Based on this, your leaders can prioritize, set goals, develop action plans and execute projects to transform your people and your enterprise toward a more innovative culture. In this article, we explain when a firm needs to carry out a new assessment for your enterprise Innovative Culture.

When to re-diagnose the innovative culture of your organization?

From our experience, we advise repeating the assessment in the following situations:

After having carried out different milestones in this transformation process, so that we can observe the changes in the perception of employees, especially the assessments of those departments or hierarchical areas in which they are working; and to be able to adjust based on the results the action plans to increase their impact.
In a merger or takeover process, to fine-tune action plans and assess the impact of these changes on the company’s culture. In this case, we advise taking a measurement of the two companies prior to the merger, and the second measurement after a prudent period of time following the merger.
During a crisis, whether global (as was the case with COVID) or particular to a sector or even a crisis specific to the organization. In this case, the analysis will allow us to see how the crisis affects the perception of culture and which areas we need to strengthen. We will also understand how we are coping with the crisis, which gives us tools to navigate it.

Apart from these scenarios, in many cases, our clients carry out an annual assessment to understand the situation of the company and to reinforce the commitment to culture and innovation with employees.

What results will I see when I make a new edition of my InnoQuotient assessment?

In our InnoQuotient platform, we have a specific section where you can compare the different diagnostics carried out over time, element by element. You can consult the environment by accessing our demo area at the following link. After selecting the CLIENT AREA DEMO you will access our simulation in which you will find 3 assessments. For example, if you choose the one for March 2020, you will be able to see the detailed results of the analysis. In the menu on the left you will find the following sections:

Our IQ Assessment ? Focuses on the results of the current edition.
Our Evolution ? In this section you can analyse the details of the comparison with any of the previous editions.
Our Global Rank ? This is where you can compare your results with the rest of the assessment collected in the InnoQuotient platform.

Do you need more information on how to measure your organisation’s innovation culture?

At InnoQuotient we will be happy to answer all your questions, request information through our website and our team will respond as soon as possible.

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Continuous improvement, why is it important to innovate in a company?

Anna Lleonart — Thu, 23 Feb 2023 09:22:30 +0000

Why is continuous improvement important to innovate in a company? In recent years, innovation has become an aspiration for many organizations, which are looking for ways to offer something new and unique that radically changes a market or an industry. Disruptive innovation is often the holy grail for corporate boards and management committees, but is this the only innovation possible? In this article we discuss continuous improvement and explain how organizations that apply it can innovate.

Difference between continuous improvement and innovation

Continuous improvement is a constant and progressive process that seeks to improve a company’s products, processes and services in order to achieve a better user experience. Innovation, on the other hand, consists of providing different and better answers to existing problems or needs. We are talking about two concepts, continuous improvement and innovation, which are closely related. In fact, continuous improvement can be the key to innovation if we put into practice the expression “think big, act small”. Thus, if we fragment a large and usually complex thought into smaller and smaller parts, the end result would probably be a multitude of possible continuous improvements that would allow us to make small variations in a product or service that would improve customer satisfaction. Thus, each modification by itself will not mean an excessive change in the product, but if after some time we compare the initial model with the resulting one after several modifications, we will be able to appreciate a significant difference. Therefore, from our point of view, continuous improvement is undoubtedly innovation. Let us take Michelangelo, the great Renaissance sculptor, as an example, and imagine him standing with his hammer and chisel in front of a huge cubic block of marble, chiseling the stone again and again. How do we label each of these chisels? However, at the end of the whole process, the block of marble would have disappeared and we would have that radicality that is David, and that marked all the sculptors who followed him.

¿Qué beneficios aporta la mejora continua a las empresas?

The greatest benefit that the application of continuous improvement brings to organizations is that it reduces the fear of risk that comes with talking about innovation. I don’t know anyone to whom continuous improvement does not seem to be something that we should apply constantly, since it is accessible to any type of organizational culture. However, innovation, either because it has become a mantra, or because it has become mythologized, or because it is not well understood, often generates resistance and is seen as something specific to certain sectors or geographical areas. It is worth mentioning the case of Toyota, which has reached where it has, mainly due to its perseverance in “Kaizen” (the maxim “today better than yesterday, tomorrow better than today”, which is the philosophy of Toyota’s production system) and constant and transversal continuous improvement.

How can organizations implement continuous improvement?

In our experience, the right way for companies to implement continuous improvement is, for example, for their managers to think about encouraging all members of the organization to detect aspects that can limit its future, or even eliminate it. And keep that list of potential stoppers or killers alive. If you are clear about these beacons, simplifying the following steps in this text for reasons of length, you only have to answer the question: what steps can I take every day to turn those “stoppers” into accelerators; and those “killers” into new opportunities? These steps will be continuous improvements that, focused on very specific points, will gradually transform our value proposition as an organization. We are much more creative destroying or criticizing than being positive, so this technique is very useful and even fun. In addition, it is essential to periodically review the possible stoppers or killers, as they change over time, and, as mentioned above, to involve all members of the organization in this process.

What is the first step to innovate?

All the most innovative organizations in the world, without exception, were once very small. However, what has allowed them to grow is that they have always maintained and stimulated the four CICE skills innate in people that are fundamental to innovate: Curiosity, Imagination, Creativity and Experimentation. Thus, the first step for a company to innovate is to know its culture and identify where the accelerators and brakes are that allow it to stimulate these four CICE skills. In this sense, InnoQuotient is a unique tool to diagnose the innovation culture of organizations, based on a solid and robust model, statistically validated by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and published in the MIT Sloan in 2013. InnoQuotient has already helped hundreds of organizations and hundreds of thousands of people learn about their culture, climate and leadership style, to stimulate the curiosity, imagination, creativity and experimentation needed to generate innovation. Thinking big, no matter how big, is free and takes no risk. While acting small, very small, means generating new data and discovering new options. The result of this, however small it may be, accumulated, eventually ends up being a great transformation. Innovation is within anyone’s reach; it is the consequence of an attitude towards life.

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More than 50% of the audiovisual industry does not receive training in innovation, a pending issue for the sector

Anna Lleonart — Tue, 07 Feb 2023 09:35:24 +0000

This is one of the main conclusions of the InnoQuotient survey in which nearly 1,100 ISE 2023 attendees participated, analyzed by Professor Jay Rao and Fran Chuan and presented by the latter during his presentation at the congress.

Training in innovation is one of the unfinished business of the audiovisual industry. More than 53% of the sector acknowledges that they do not receive any training to innovate, but act by individual intuition, while innovation is a collective activity. “Organizations are allocating a lot of resources, but they don’t seem to be stimulating among their members the four fundamental skills for innovation: curiosity, imagination, creativity and experimentation. They are more focused on technology”, said Fran Chuan, co-founder and CEO of InnoQuotient, during his presentation at Integrated Systems Europe (ISE). This is one of the main conclusions of the InnoQuotient survey in which nearly 1,100 attendees participated in the ISE 2023, the world’s leading trade fair for the audiovisual industry and systems integration, which was held in Barcelona from January 31 to February 3 and broke attendance record with more than 58,000 people. During his presentation at the congress, Fran Chuan analyzed the results of the survey, whose sample was large enough to have a 95% reliability in the results, with a margin of error of 2.95%. Thus, Chuan stressed that the audiovisual industry is very innovative compared to other sectors, but companies seem to confuse innovation with novelty and technological development and explained that organizations tend to compete in the market to, for example, have the largest screen and the smallest pixel, “but is that innovation? Is that what the market needs?” he asked. “To increase the likelihood of success of a novelty, one might ask what is the problem it solves? Or what need does it satisfy?” he added. Similarly, the co-founder of InnoQuotient detailed that in the audiovisual industry “there is incredible talent”, but it is not used optimally, since when opportunities are detected, “the data tells us that they do not launch to solve them”. In addition, he pointed out that the sector does not “systematize innovation”. “Although the industry is incredibly good at generating ideas, there is a bottleneck when it comes to turning these ideas into opportunities and that is a problem. The data tells us that opportunity spotting is a space with quite a bit of room for improvement”, he stressed.

Scarcity and necessity stimulate innovation

In addition, Fran Chuan stressed that regions with fewer resources, such as Africa and Asia, have cultures that are more prone to innovation than those with more possibilities, such as Europe and North America. “Maybe we are too comfortable with the results we get. We don’t have the need or the scarcity that stimulates curiosity, creativity and innovation”, he commented. According to the CEO of InnoQuotient, the same applies to the educational level of the audiovisual sector: the higher the level, the less innovative you are. “When you have a doctorate you incorporate a series of data and conclusions, which is extremely useful in intermediate and final stages of innovation processes, but when we talk about innovation we talk about the future, and the future is not and we have data. So what matters is how curious you are and how much you let your imagination run wild with options to answer your curiosity, not so much how smart or how well educated you are”, explained Chuan, who stressed that “every innovation in history starts with an open question” and that, when we talk about innovation and the future, “we must act, collect data, analyze it and act again”. As for age, according to Fran Chuan, it does not play an important role in innovation, also within the audiovisual industry. “We tend to think that young people are more innovative than older people, but it’s not true. Up to the age of 26 there is better data, but after that age there is no difference”, he said.

Recommendations to improve innovation

To boost innovation in the audiovisual sector, the co-founder of InnoQuotient proposed a series of recommendations. The first of them is to create a “lingua franca”, a common language on what we mean by innovation, not only in the sector but in each of the organizations. He also insisted on the importance of knowing what the cultural accelerators and brakes are “to develop a true culture of innovation” and promote greater efficiency. “When you are more efficient, what you create are trends, and when you generate trends, talent is attracted to this area. Then, all of a sudden, you have more and more talent generating more and more trends efficiently”, Chuan explained. Another recommendation is to create interdepartmental teams, rather than working in silos or vertically, which facilitates collaboration between different areas of organizations when working together. Finally, he encouraged organizations to conduct a survey to learn more about their culture, because “what your culture is like determines your results”. In this sense, it is worth remembering that it is a unique tool to diagnose the culture before the challenge of developing a Culture of Innovation of organizations, based on a solid and robust model, developed by Professors Jay Rao and Joe Weintraub of Babson College , statistically validated by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and published in the MIT Sloan in 2013 .

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Disruptive innovation vs. continuous improvement

Anna Lleonart — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 12:11:39 +0000

Disruptive innovation is a term that is being heard more and more often on company boards and management committees. Organizational leaders aspire to it without often being clear about what it is and how to achieve it. In this article we explain what disruptive innovation is and how it differs from continuous improvement.

What is disruptive innovation?

There are many definitions of disruptive innovation. From the study and our experience, disruptive innovation is a type of innovation that radically changes a market or industry, creating a new way of doing things that is better and more accessible to consumers.

7 disruptive innovations

Throughout history, there have not been too many disruptive innovations. Some of the most significant are:

Fire. Used by humans for thousands of years to cook food, heat spaces, illuminate areas and protect against dangerous animals.
The wheel. Fundamental for the development of agriculture, commerce, transportation and the existence of many machines.
Writing. It has allowed the transmission of ideas and knowledge from generation to generation.
The printing press. It has made possible the reproduction of texts and graphics and the massive dissemination of information and knowledge.
The steam engine. It has facilitated the automation of a large number of production processes and has transformed the way energy is produced and transported.
Electricity. It has enabled a host of technologies and transformed the way we live and work.
Internet. It has radically changed the way we communicate, access information and trade.

Is it possible for organizations to achieve disruptive innovations?

Although many managers use this term in their communications, disruptive innovations are not easy to achieve. All of the aforementioned disruptions were culminated by someone. However, it cannot be considered a solitary work, but rather the cumulative process of small steps taken by one and others that culminate in a concrete achievement. Thus, for example, the Internet was not the innovation of the well-known Vint Cerf, but was based on the work and conclusions of Paul Baran, who in turn was based on the work of Kleinrock, and so we could continue. Not to mention the icing on the cake that Tim Berners-Lee put with the HTML language that facilitated the exchange of information and the creation of what we now call web pages.

How is disruptive innovation different from continuous improvement?

There are several ways to classify innovation. If we focus on the impact they have, we could categorize it as follows:

Disruptive innovation: creates new industries and markets.
Radical innovation: create new business models.
Incremental innovation: modifies existing business models.
Continuous improvement: improving the efficiency, usability and, therefore, user experience of existing products or services.

Know the difference between continuous improvement and innovation

If we take this structure into account, we can view innovation as a double-entry learning ladder. On the one hand, we have the attitude and, on the other hand, we have the experience and the results. It is a matter of putting into practice the expression that almost every manager knows, but that very few apply: “think big, act small”. In this sense, if we take “big” thinking and fragment it, we are likely to get different options for radical innovations, which in turn we will fragment to obtain possible smaller innovations, which we could label as incremental. And if each of these possible innovations, labeled as incremental because of their impact, risk and difficulty characteristics, were to be broken down again into very small steps that bring us closer to that “big” thought, we would obtain continuous improvements, since they do not change much of the initial product or service, but they improve it enough to generate greater customer or user satisfaction. Therefore, from our point of view, continuous improvement is innovation. If, for example, we continuously improve the weight, ergonomics, simplicity, etc. of a product, we will modify it little by little until, after a while, if we compare the original product with the current one, we will observe the enormous transformation we have achieved.

How to innovate in a company?

Innovation is not magic, it is focus, perseverance and learning. The first step to innovate in the business environment is to know the details of the culture of your organization (or rather, the differences between the different cultures that exist in any organization), to identify where the accelerators and brakes are that allow you to stimulate curiosity, imagination, creativity and experimentation within your company, essential skills to generate innovation. Knowing the details of our culture in the face of the challenge of innovation is not easy, because there are not so many tools specialized in these two concepts together. InnoQuotient is a unique tool for diagnosing the innovation culture of organizations, based on a solid and robust model, developed by two Babson College academics, statistically validated by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and published in MIT Sloan in 2013.

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Workplace demotivation, how to solve it with the culture of innovation?

Anna Lleonart — Wed, 23 Nov 2022 13:07:24 +0000

One of the main problems of organizations is the demotivation of their employees. Motivation in the business environment is the ability of an organization to keep its people involved in achieving the business objectives set. It consists of having them active, not only physically, but also emotionally. This is closely linked to performance and productivity and, therefore, maintaining staff motivation is one of the main challenges faced by managers of organizations, who often do not know how to act. In this article we offer you the keys to encourage employee motivation through the culture of innovation.

What does work motivation have to do with innovation culture?

We start from the premise that every organization has a culture, whether it wants to or not. This culture determines the outcome, as it is made up of many factors, such as the resources available, what processes we have in place to manage those resources, and how success is defined and measured. These three components may or may not stimulate people. However, what really stimulates us are not the aspects of our work, but the hard(those of a technical nature), butsoft (those that have to do with one’s personal traits). That is, what really motivates us is to be aware of the purpose of the organization in which we are, that this purpose challenges or stimulates us, as well as having the necessary climate and autonomy to deploy our imagination and creativity, being able to grow as a person and as a professional. It is here where the culture of innovation is revealed as the maximum exponent of that space where elperformand eltransform are combined, that profiting from the present and exploring and transforming ourselves by taking advantage of the future. Therefore, we cannot forget that the etymology of motivation is “motive for action”. Thus, feeling part of the purpose gives us the motive and the cultural space to act creatively and experiment to discover new options.

Business motivation, how to improve it?

Innovation is synonymous with the future, as it involves creating new solutions to existing problems and needs. Therefore, an organization with a culture of innovation will always combine short-term profitability with sustainability in the future of the organization. This requires that the people in the organization feel comfortable challenging the current answers, so they apply the process “Act + Get data + Analyze data” and start again. In this sense, one of the best ways to stimulate this virtuous circle is to gamify the process. As a great expert in creativity says, Philippe DelespesseAccording to the founder of Inteligencia Creativa and Binnakle.com, “when we gamify a business process, the results never cease to surprise us all. Not only do we obtain surprising business results, but we also manage to involve the participants, better integrate the messages and change attitudes”. In addition, we cannot forget that motivation is an emotion and positive emotions are one of the great medicines for many ills that beset us today.

Main causes of demotivation at work

The main causes or errors that kill work motivation within an organization:

Management egos. Business history is full of highly successful managers who end up bankrupting the organization that hired them because of their successes in previous organizations. None of these executives, when they signed the contract of the organization that went bankrupt, had a plan to make it go bankrupt.
The way in which the organization earns money and remunerates employees, mainly managers. If you pay to sell what today gives you prestige and success, you create a tunnel effect that limits your ability to, for example, detect new trends and internal weaknesses.
Not knowing the strengths and weaknesses of the organization’s culture. Climate surveys are conducted, some with enormous popularity. However, climate is only part of the culture. Climate refers to the moment, while culture is much more stable and consistent, being the one that creates spaces for personal growth that is sustainable over time. Talented people are not so much attached to money as they are to growth, so if they hit a ceiling they will leave. This results in unwanted turnover, i.e., people leaving who we wish had not left.

What are the consequences of demotivation at work?

We have already commented on the causes that lead to employee demotivation and their consequences can affect not only the work environment but also performance, among which the following stand out:

Decreased employee commitment to the organization.
Negative attitude towards challenges.
Reduced productivity.
Decrease in the quality of the products or services offered.
Increased unwanted turnover.

How to solve demotivation at work?

InnoQuotient’s role in fostering work motivation through the culture of innovation is crucial, helping hundreds of organizations and hundreds of thousands of people to learn about your culture, your climate and your leadership style, to stimulate the curiosity, imagination, creativity and experimentation needed to generate innovation and, in this way, boost your team’s motivation. InnoQuotient is a unique tool for assessing the innovation culture of organizations, based on a solid and robust model, developed by two Babson College academics, statistically validated by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and published in MIT Sloan in 2013. Since then, its database and, therefore, its capacity to draw very powerful conclusions, not only for the organizations that carry out this diagnosis, but also for institutions that wish to analyze the data, draw conclusions and publish them, has been growing steadily.

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Improving the productivity of your company is possible through the Culture of Innovation.

Anna Lleonart — Wed, 26 Oct 2022 10:05:52 +0000

Improving productivity is one of the main concerns of managers in organizations, who often face the challenge of increasing it without being very clear about where to start. In this article we offer you the keys to improve your company’s productivity through a culture of innovation.

what is productivity?

Traditionally, we understand productivity as the relationship between the amount of product obtained in a given time, so that the more units in less time, the higher the productivity. But this definition implies that the production capacity is linear and can be performed by a machine. Reducing productivity to units is short-sighted. Let’s take an example: If we manufacture pens and want higher productivity, in a mechanistic sense, all we have to do is make the necessary adjustments to produce more units per hour. However, if we are considering whether pens have a future or looking for different ways to write, as happened to typewriter manufacturers with the advent of personal computers and word processors, we need curiosity, imagination, creativity, and a willingness to experiment. To this end, we must create a culture in which these factors are welcomed and encouraged, and to which quality time and space are dedicated to put them into action. We can’t stop making pens because it pays our paychecks today, but we need to come up with new ways of writing because it will pay our paychecks tomorrow. In this way, to create a culture of innovation increases productivity not only in the short term and in the sense of producing, which would imply a continuous improvement, but it stimulates thinking differently, seeking new solutions to existing problems or needs and, therefore, the productivity of value and in the long term.

How to improve the productivity of a company?

To begin with, it is necessary to assume that there is the present and the future, that is, productivity and exploration – what many organizations call “Perform and Transform” – and that they are two very different worlds. The world of productivity, of operational excellence, the world of efficiency is what pays the payroll, but if we want to increase value productivity, we must allocate time and space to creativity and exploration. In this sense, it is also essential to learn different techniques, since we cannot apply the same concepts, methods and tools of productivity to creativity. In addition, we must accept that we are experimenting and, therefore, that unexpected results may occur, from which we will have to learn in order to get closer to the desired objective. In traditional productivity, “zero error” is pursued, while innovation works to generate errors and learn from them. Unexpected results are part of improving value productivity.

What mistakes should we avoid?

To improve value productivity, the first mistake to avoid from a leadership point of view is to judge, since doing so sends the message that we have the truth and, under that premise, innovation has no place. Another common misconception is that everyone is equally creative at the same time on the same days and that creativity can be delegated. On the other hand, leaders must be models and examples within the organizations. Finally, the most common mistake made by leaders is to reward only success, as this kills the attempt.

What is InnoQuotient’s role in increasing company productivity?

An organization can try to implement all these recommendations, but if it does not know its starting point, it is walking blind. InnoQuotinent is a diagnosis that makes it possible to numerically visualize where the accelerators and resistances of the different cultures that make up any organization are, when it comes to promoting the innovation culture of a company. The first step is to get to know each other.

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Mejorar la productividad de tu empresa es posible a través de la Cultura de la Innovación

Anna Lleonart — Wed, 26 Oct 2022 09:30:09 +0000

Mejorar la productividad es una de las principales preocupaciones de los directivos de las organizaciones, que muchas veces se enfrentan al reto de incrementarla sin tener muy claro por dónde deben empezar. En este artículo te ofrecemos las claves para mejorar la productividad de tu empresa a través de la cultura de la innovación.

¿Qué es la productividad?

Tradicionalmente, entendemos productividad como la relación entre la cantidad de producto obtenida en un tiempo determinado, de forma que, a más unidades en menos tiempo, mayor será la productividad. Pero esta definición implica que la capacidad de producción es lineal y que puede ser desempeñada por una máquina. Reducir a unidades la productividad es cortoplacista. Pongamos un ejemplo: Si fabricamos bolígrafos y queremos una mayor productividad, en un sentido mecanicista, basta con que hagamos los ajustes necesarios para fabricar más unidades por hora. Sin embargo, si nos planteamos si los bolígrafos tienen futuro o buscamos maneras diferentes de escribir, como les pasó a los fabricantes de máquinas de escribir con la aparición de los computadores personales y los procesadores de texto, necesitamos curiosidad, imaginación, creatividad, y ganas de experimentar. Para ello, debemos crear una cultura en la que estos factores sean bien recibidos y estimulados y a los que se dediquen tiempo de calidad y espacios para ponerlos en marcha. No podemos parar de fabricar bolígrafos porque ello paga nuestras nóminas de hoy, pero nos hace falta idear nuevas formas de escribir porque eso pagará nuestras nóminas de mañana. De esta forma, crear una cultura de la innovación incrementa la productividad no solo a corto plazo y en el sentido de producir, lo que supondría una mejora continua, sino que estimula el pensar diferente, buscar soluciones nuevas a problemas o necesidades existentes y, por tanto, la productividad de valor y a largo plazo.

¿Cómo mejorar la productividad de una empresa?

Para empezar, es necesario asumir que existen el presente y el futuro, es decir, la productividad y la exploración -lo que muchas organizaciones llaman el “Perform y el Transform”, y que son dos mundos muy diferentes. El mundo de la productividad, de la excelencia operacional, el mundo de la eficiencia es lo que paga la nómina, pero si queremos incrementar la productividad de valor, debemos asignar tiempos y espacios a la creatividad y la exploración. En este sentido, también es fundamental aprender técnicas diferentes, ya que no podemos aplicar los mismos conceptos, métodos y herramientas de la productividad a la creatividad. Además, debemos aceptar que estamos experimentando y, por tanto, que pueden darse resultados no esperados, de los que habremos de aprender para ir acercándonos al objetivo deseado. En la productividad tradicional se persigue el “cero error”, mientras que en la innovación se trabaja para generar errores y aprender de ellos. Los resultados no esperados forman parte de la mejora de la productividad de valor.

¿Qué errores debemos evitar?

Para mejorar la productividad de valor, el primer error a evitar desde el punto de vista del liderazgo es juzgar, ya que al hacerlo lanzamos el mensaje de que la verdad la tenemos nosotros y, bajo esa premisa, la innovación no cabe. Otro error habitual es pensar que todo el mundo es igualmente creativo a la misma hora de los mismos días y que la creatividad se puede delegar. Por contra, los líderes deben ser modelo y ejemplo dentro de las organizaciones. Por último, el error más común por parte de los líderes es el de premiar sólo el éxito, ya que, de este modo, se mata el intento.

¿Cuál es el papel de InnoQuotient a la hora de incrementar la productividad de la empresa?

Una organización puede intentar llevar a la práctica todas estas recomendaciones, pero si no sabe cuál es su punto de partida, camina a ciegas. InnoQuotinent es un diagnóstico que permite visibilizar de manera numérica dónde están los aceleradores y las resistencias de las diferentes culturas que componen cualquier organización, a la hora de impulsar la cultura de la innovación de una empresa. El primer paso es conocerse.

The post Mejorar la productividad de tu empresa es posible a través de la Cultura de la Innovación appeared first on InnoQuotient – We assess the Innovation Culture.

People management: 7 business concerns that can be solved thanks to a culture of innovation

Anna Lleonart — Wed, 28 Sep 2022 11:00:47 +0000

Being able to adapt to new scenarios is vital for the survival of companies and, in this, beyond offering a good product or service, or having a true leader, employees play a crucial role. Not surprisingly, among the main concerns of business leaders are those related to people management. From InnoQuotient we compile, in this article, seven concerns of managers and heads of Human Resources departments of companies related to employees and that can be solved by implementing a good culture of innovation:

Engagement

Engagement goes far beyond “warming the chairs”. It includes an emotional bond, so it incorporates the fundamental aspects for innovation: curiosity, imagination, creativity and experimentation. All of them with a high percentage of emotionality.

Motivation

Another of the concerns of employers with respect to their employees is motivation, understood as the positive attitude towards professional challenges. Motivation is the “motive for action”, which requires us to be aware of why we do what we do, as well as the impact it has on 360º+1, that “one” being each employee. In this respect, the main role of leaders is not to demotivate.

Absenteeism

Absenteeism is often the consequence of the absence of the two previous points. Without commitment and motivation, it is easy to fall into the trap of not only not doing one’s job, but also not showing up at all.

Rotation

Within turnover, the one that most concerns the managers of a company is the unwanted turnover, that is, the turnover of people identified by their hard skills (those of a technical nature) and soft skills (called soft skills, which are those that have to do with the personal traits of each person) and, therefore, determine their future projection in the organization. The main reasons for turnover are usually in the soft part, since hard skills can be acquired or outsourced, but “stupidity is incurable”.

Productivity

When we talk about quality, we are referring not only to the ability to generate a superior amount of output with a given amount of input (e.g., the number of accounting entries per hour), but also to the ability to learn.

Quality

Leaders in any organization are concerned about the perceived quality of their products or services. But quality is not only the consequence of a certain standard (ISO), but of people’s attitude. Therefore, continuous improvement is an activity of people with the first two points (commitment and motivation) absolutely active and who do not pose a problem in the next two (absenteeism and turnover).

Excellence

We refer to excellence in all areas: operational, relational, products and services, processes and experiences. Manuals and procedures help, but excellence is achieved with excited people. Excellence cannot be achieved without emotions. To these seven, we can add the concern for the future, a constant in the minds of managers of organizations. What will the future of a company or institution that takes into account the above seven concerns be like? A culture of innovation focused on the people who make it up is the best way to foster employee commitment and motivation, combat absenteeism and turnover and, as a result, improve productivity, quality and excellence. And the first step for all this is to measure the innovation culture of your organization through a diagnostic tool, such as InnoQuotient, which allows you the necessary transformation to create a strong innovation culture.

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