The race is on to innovate – but What is Design Thinking and How can your team use it to solve problems, create new products and cut processes at work?
Here's how you can drive Innovation culture within the organization with excerpts from the eBook on Leadership & The Future of Work by award winner Mark Stuart.
1. THE ROLE OF A LEADER
Whilst we always finish the sessions with an excellent range of pragmatic, ambitious and some down-right crazy ideas, the problem with most corporate innovation initiatives is the follow-up, or lack thereof. Or, more specifically, does this suggest a lack of innovation strategy from the leadership team?
It doesn’tmatter anymore what industry you’re in, innovation is one the top 3 topics occupying the CEO’s mind. Even traditional firms are now recruiting ex-tech data scientists without even fully understanding what they do, how they do it, and what potential there is from leveraging the data.
If you're a leader or you want your leaders in the company ensure success when it comes to innvoation training, here are characteristics they must have:
Support continuous learning and see the need for change & innovation
Buy-in to the proces of learning
Understand how to implement change and innovation
Listen to ideas from the team
Be fully immersed and remember your role as a leader
Help by supporting initiatives with funds, strategies and driving the direction
2. CORPORATE LEADERSHIPWITH A START-UP
In the past 5 to 10 years, the leadership development industry has been dominated by terms like VUCA. If you’re not familiar with this term, it suggests that we’re now (or have been) living in a Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous world, and that successful leaders need to be able to adapt to the new environment we find ourselves in.
Let’s look at 3 of these start-up traits in more detail, and how corporate leaders can adapt them to suit their environment:
Innovating at Pace
Flatten Organization Sturctures
Flexible and redefined roles
It’s clear that if corporate leaders are going to adopt some or all of the above strategies something needs to change, starting with them. It takes a new skillset to manage a remote or flexible workforce, but technology is there to help you. It takes a change in mindset to drive innovation at all levels and move faster without having all the information you might have previously had, but there are numerous case studies and online resources there to help you.
3. A 5-MINUTE GUIDE TO INNOVATION
Design Thinking. It’s a hip and trendy buzzword dominating the corridors of firms across the globe from product design companies to corporate accountants. But what is it really, and does it hold any value in helping drive change and innovation?
What we love about Design Thinking are two key things: firstly, the aim is to innovate with the customer in mind, hence empathy and seeking out customer feedback are essential parts of the process. The second key distinction is that it gives non-designers like me a framework to implement and drive change I was looking for. Since then I’ve been able to use it to better structure change initiatives from processes to products to service.
At the end of the process, we’re looking for good implementable innovation that can benefit your company in the short to medium term.It should remain a fun process, involving a diverse group of people to ensure you get a wide range of ideas.
Design Thinking is a process that works when done eectively, and best of all, you no longer need to be a designer to utilise it.
If you enjoyed this article and would like to finds out more how your leadership can drive innovation and how to have this culture in the organization, register in our upcoming training in Malaysia this 05-06 August, 2019.
Mark Stuart is a professional speaker and trainer that specialises in Innovation, Design Thinking, and Leadership in a Digital Age. He lives in Singapore but travels globally for work.
Innovation & Design Thinking Trainer Certified in Design Thinking & Innovation by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Professional Member of Asia Professional Speakers – Singapore Group Representative - British Chamber of Commerce Singapore, Entrepreneur & Small Business Committee Committee Member - Finance & Insurance Focus Group, Singapore Human Resources Institute (SHRI)