Developing Innovation Talent

January 22, 2011 By Aminda

Cultivating an innovative culture is a team effort between employers and employees. Here are some tips for both.

What Organizations Can Do

Innovation Management magazine recently published an in-depth piece about cultivating innovation talent management. Some of their key points:

Keep innovation Visible

In the most innovative companies, the concept is a defining part of the organization’s strategy; from definition and development to execution. It is regularly discussed in company meetings from the Board on down and as normally as topics such as marketing, sales, operations and finance.

Think Beyond Traditional Management Strategies

Traditional hierarchical management models are becoming obsolete in managing today’s creative knowledge workers. Rather, these individuals are incentivized by the power to make autonomous decisions. They prefer knowledge and cooperation over formal rank and titles. Organizations need to provide an atmosphere of stability and trust where employees at all levels are free to express ideas.

Empower People with the Right Tools

Internet-based collaboration technologies allow organizations to make use of workers in new ways– supporting innovation management and facilitating the transition to a more open environment. These solutions create virtual communities in which all employees can participate by contributing their knowledge and expertise to areas, subjects and challenges where they have experience and interest.

What Employees Can Do

15Inno offered the following the following tips for employees looking to jumpstart their innovation career.

Align With Executives

To become an integral part of the innovation efforts, an employee needs a clear vision of how the innovation strategy aligns with overall corporate strategy. One way to do this is to make an extra effort to understand what matters most for the executives right now and deliver on this.

Get Connected

As an employer embraces open innovation, workers will need to get on board if they want to remain where they are. One way an employee can show management their commitment is to work on building better external networks, both personal and corporate. Look at the sources that will be valuable connections in developing the offerings of your company.


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