What's at the Intersection of Innovation and Disruption? People.
by Tiffani Bova for Huffington Post
The word "innovation" gets tossed around a lot. What does it really mean? And how can you prepare yourself and your company to become more innovative? Who better to ask than Lisa Bodell, an award-winning author and the CEO of futurethink. As a futurist and expert on the topic of change, she serves as a global council member of the World Economic Forum, and she's helped thousands of senior leaders ignite innovation. She's also the most recent guest on my What’s Next!podcast.
Lisa sees innovation beyond a standard definition; she views it on a spectrum. Starting with small, incremental changes—such as a cardboard sleeve on a coffee cup—all the way to highly disruptive innovation. Further, she posits that innovation isn’t just about being creative or having great ideas, it’s about simplifying the unnecessarily complex and having an open mind to a set of diverse ideas.
It can be challenging for established teams to bring diversity into the group. They might bring forward great ideas, but in fact, they likely struggle to turn those ideas into something meaningful for customers or their business.