Conference on “Leadership and Innovation in the Emerging Creativity Economy”

I attended an innovation workshop at PARC last December. It was hosted by the South Bay Organizational Development Network (SBODN) and the IP Society (even link). There was a brainstorm about problems in innovation in organizations and this is what I recorded from the audience:

1. Management encouraging innovation but the framework discouraging it.
2. Organizations are optimized for efficiency rather than novelty.
3. Leader of an organization can be entrepreneurial but the rest of the organization has to try to provide balance.
4. Burnout – not believing people are truly empowered; feeling like they’ve done it all before.
5. Low emotional maturity – chaos ensues.
6. Not defining expectations.
7. Not having time, deadlines inhibiting innovation.
8. Organization’s leadership will punish risk taking if things do not work out.
9. A delegating party does not understand the complexity of the work.
1o. Boredom – no passion, no heart.
11. Working on frivolous problems (things that don’t matter to the customers or to the business objectives).
12. No agreement about a meaningful time horizon.
13. What does innovation mean? Lack of agreement about its definition.
14. Swinging for the fences.
15. Getting too clever (“why can my cell phone do everything, including take a picture, but it can’t make a simple phone call, the basics?”)