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            [post_title] => "China is the next innovation powerhouse" Six Word Wisdom from George S. Yip
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            [post_content] => Frances Ruane picFrances Ruane served as Director of the ESRI from 2006 to 2015.  She previously taught in the Dept of Economics at TCD, and earlier in her career she work at Queens University in Canada and at the Central Bank of Ireland and the IDA. In Ireland, her current activities include chair of the Interdepartmental Group on Making Work Pay for People with Disabilities at the Department of Social Welfare, membership of the Public Interest Committee of KPMG, and an Honorary Professor in the Department of Economics at Trinity College, where she contributes to the MSc in Economic Policy Studies. She is also a Research Affiliate at the ESRI and a member of the Royal Irish Academy.

 
IMI: Based on your current work – if you only had 6 words of advice to give a business – what would they be?

FR: Look positively beyond the immediate.

  IMI: What does this mean? FR: After a period of rapid growth, the global financial crisis meant that Irish businesses had to concentrate on handling immediate challenges.  They managed that disruption well and this contributed to the strength of Ireland’s recovery.   But the focus on the immediate has left many businesses with legacy issues (debt burdens, under-investment in innovation, poor staff morale). And now businesses need to prepare for the medium term when we discover what is really meant by ‘Brexit means Brexit’.  Forward looking businesses leaders need now to ask: what could Brexit mean for my market and company? Where am I exposed to risk and how can I mitigate it?   [post_title] => "Look positively beyond the immediate" Six Word Wisdom from Frances Ruane [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => look-positively-beyond-immediate-six-word-wisdom-frances-ruane [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2020-05-11 19:52:32 [post_modified_gmt] => 2020-05-11 19:52:32 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.imi.ie/?p=16052 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) [2] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 19303 [post_author] => 7 [post_date] => 2017-05-17 10:13:47 [post_date_gmt] => 2017-05-17 10:13:47 [post_content] => [post_title] => Business Model Innovation [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => business-model-innovation [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2020-05-16 09:04:03 [post_modified_gmt] => 2020-05-16 09:04:03 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.imi.ie/?p=19303 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) [3] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 8268 [post_author] => 39 [post_date] => 2014-09-29 11:53:40 [post_date_gmt] => 2014-09-29 11:53:40 [post_content] => Described as ‘The Jane Bond of Innovation’, Nilofer Merchant has grown businesses — from Fortune 500s and silicon valley web start-ups — for 20 years.  She will be a keynote speaker at the IMI National Management Conference on 9 October 2014.  As an innovative thinker and practitioner, Nilofer will share her thoughts and experience on how we best align our organisations to succeed against our business challenges today and into the future. nmweb150 IMI: Based on your current work – if you only had 6 words of advice to give a business - what would they be? NM: Not everyone will, but anyone can. IMI: What does this mean? NM: Most organizations think of work in boxes. As in engineering does this and marketing does that. Or, even more personally as Tom is responsible for delivering X and Susan is responsible for Y. This is to put work into neat little boxes to create some type of measurability. It’s a relic of the industrial era when the way to profitability and market performance was on efficiency and productivity. But if you look around your workplace, you’ll notice the most obvious truth. Most things are not failing because so and so didn’t do such and such. It’s because of a gap. A gap between organizational silos. A gap between understanding. A gap between the organizational boxes. In order to close the box, you need to organize not around boxes but around purpose. Organize not by “who should be here” but who wants to be here. And while not everybody will rise up to solve the situation, create new products, etc … what you’ll discover is an amazing reserve of talent that exists. Things you didn’t know were possible will happen. Because anybody can. IMI: Where should we look for further information? NM: Visit my website nilofermerchant.com Nilofer Merchant is a keynote speaker at the IMI National Management Conference taking place on Thursday 9 October. If you are interested in attending click here to register. [post_title] => "Not everyone will, but anyone can" Six Word Wisdom from Nilofer Merchant [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => everyone-will-anyone-can-six-word-wisdom-nilofer-merchant [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2020-05-11 21:02:28 [post_modified_gmt] => 2020-05-11 21:02:28 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.imi.ie/?p=8268 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) )
Costas Markides

Costas Markides

18th May 2017

Costas Markides is an IMI associate who teaches on the Senior Executive Programme.  

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"China is the next innovation powerhouse" Six Word Wisdom from George S. Yip
"Look positively beyond the immediate" Six Word Wisdom from Frances Ruane
Business Model Innovation
"Not everyone will, but anyone can" Six Word Wisdom from Nilofer Merchant

Stop Asking People to Innovate

More than two hundred years ago, a class of 10-year old German students were asked by their teacher to solve a seemingly difficult problem: “If you add all the numbers from 1 to 100, what is the sum total?”  Most of us will probably do a search on Google to find the answer to such a problem.  But one of those ten-year-old kids came up with the answer really quick.  Instead of adding the numbers linearly (1+2+3+4 and so on), he added them as follows: (1+100 = 101); (2+99 = 101); (3+98 = 101).  He quickly realised that he had 50 pairs, each adding up to 101.  So the answer is 50 X 101 = 5050.  That little kid turned out to be the biggest mathematician that Germany ever produced.  His name was Gauss.

The question is: “did Gauss think creatively about his task? Did he innovate?”  The answer, obviously, is yes.  But why was he so creative?  Was it because we asked him to think outside the box or to think creatively?  Was it because we asked him to be innovative?  Obviously not!  The simple answer is that Gauss was creative because in trying to tackle a really difficult task, he quickly realised that he could not do it by using the standard methodology or the standard way of doing things (which was adding the numbers linearly).  He, therefore, questioned the way he was trying to solve the problem.  By questioning his methodology, he was able to think of another way (i.e. another methodology) to solve his difficult problem.

We do not get innovation in companies by encouraging them to think outside the box! (Photo source)

This example has immediate applicability in business.  We will not get innovation in companies by asking people to be innovative or by encouraging them to think outside the box!  What we must do instead is to first give people a really difficult task (say a stretch goal) and then (and more importantly) “sell” it to them to win emotional commitment for it.  If they really bought into the goal, they will attempt to achieve it.  But they will quickly realise that they cannot achieve such a stretch goal by simply using their old ways of doing business.  They will, therefore, begin to question their ways of doing business (like Gauss).  Out of this questioning will, hopefully, come new and innovative ways of operating that will allow us to achieve this stretch goal.  The key to all this is that people “buy into” the stretch goal.  And nobody will buy into anything until we actively “sell” it to them to win their emotional commitment.

All this suggests that innovation is not an end in itself.  It is, instead, a by-product of something else.  And that something else is the active questioning that comes about when our people are trying to achieve a really stretch goal that they have really have bought into.  If you don’t believe me, just read the biography of Steve Jobs.


Costas Markides is an IMI associate who teaches on the Senior Executive Programme.  Costas is Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship and holds the Robert P. Bauman Chair of Strategic Leadership at the London Business School.  He is a researcher and widely published author on the topics of diversification, strategic innovation, business-model innovation and international acquisitions.   He was named one of the Top 50  Most Influential Management Gurus by Thinkers50 in 2011.

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