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Part 3 of 3: Talent Development as an enabling force for innovation campaigns
Innovation campaigns are great for near-term impact and results. They get ideas into the pipeline for evaluation and possible implementation. And there are tangible payoffs in terms of increased revenues, improved efficiency, and cost savings.
Yet it’s the intangibles that are the foundational source for those tangible results – and for the vast majority of a company’s market value. Yes, intangibles in the form of intellectual capital comprise an average of 80% of the market value of publicly traded companies, with tangible book value supplying the remaining 20%.
Intangible assets provide the organizational capacity to innovate and can take many forms, such as: resident knowledge and expertise among employees; level of employee engagement; customer loyalty; effective R&D and disruptive technologies; ability to recruit/develop/retain top talent; robust knowledge management and innovation management systems; and an overall culture for innovation.
Intangible assets have a direct impact on meeting the top strategic challenges that CEOs face globally. That is, they provide the short and long-term capability to:
What’s needed to accelerate the impact of innovation campaigns on sustainable business performance and success is a 2-fold strategy:
For innovation sponsors, this represents a significant opportunity to partner with Talent Development professionals to implement this strategy and accelerate its increased impact on business performance and results.
Build competencies and behaviors for being innovative
Enabling employees to be innovative requires putting the power, responsibility, knowledge and tools for innovation at their fingertips. The knowledge and skills for being creative and innovative include: sharing a common language for innovation; being versatile with different styles of innovative thinking; following a cross-functional innovation process; consciously building innovative teamwork; and tapping into intrinsic meaning and motivation for innovation.
The mandate of the Talent Development function is to build and strengthen the competencies and behaviors that employees need to innovate in their everyday work, including the campaigns. This can be accomplished in accord with the top strategic priorities of HR departments globally (according to Deloitte’s report on 2016 Global Human Capital Trends), but with a deliberate focus on innovation:
But the nitty-gritty, down-to-earth, practical question now arises:
How might innovation sponsors unite with TD to co-create initiatives that actualize this potential?
Here’s our recommendation...
Start with the top HR priority: Develop Leaders. Commit to a comprehensive focus on Leadership for Innovation. With this focus, leaders at all levels can learn and practice what it takes to implement the other two components: engage employees to work innovatively, and empower the network of innovative teams
Within this Leadership for Innovation focus, there are 2 key roles for all leaders (from entry supervisor to CEO) to play:
By practicing these roles, leaders not only augment their own job performance and careers, but also earn the credibility they need to effectively guide and motivate their peers and subordinates.
To guide the effectiveness of these initiatives and the positive practices they will spawn, its critically important to have the right analytics by which to measure progress. According to the McLean report, “metrics and analytics was the least effective HR area regardless of organization size.” Deloitte adds that 77% of executives now rate people analytics as a key priority. From an innovation perspective, such analytics could quantify and track how well the organization is:
Provide real-time learning interventions that bolster campaign engagement and innovative results
Innovation campaigns can be optimized when they occur in conjunction with the larger initiatives for accelerating the organization’s capacity to innovate. Making Talent Development an essential component of innovation campaigns generates broader levels of engagement along with higher quality of ideas and participation in the campaigns… while actively building the intellectual capital assets of the company.
There are numerous ways to offer learning and development opportunities as integral to campaigns. For example:
In closing
Two viewpoints comprise the through-line of this conversation:
Viewpoints have power and consequences. From our decades of experience consulting with multinational corporations, we strongly believe that these two viewpoints have a “fit” with the times. They have a vitality that empowers innovation sponsors to lead, engage, and transform their organizations… and thereby make a quantum leap in the impact of their innovation campaigns on near-term and long-term business success.
Read Part 1: Innovation is the core driver to meet critical business needs
Read Part 2: Professional knowledge and motivation: essential, but not sufficient