Speaking of innovation (as I was yesterday), here’s a great resource. Corante, who runs blog hubs in marketing, media, and the web, has added a hub for innovation.

The post that caught my eye today was, “Can you train someone to be innovative” by Jeffrey Phillips. Jeff points out that no matter how much companies spend in money and effort to teach people how to innovate, i.e., think outside the box, the culture needs to support them when they begin to do it.

Right on, Jeff. If the culture doesn’t celebrate failure, as opposed to tolerating it or, as many do, penalizing it, why should anyone gamble their future by innovating? As I wrote last July in “Don’t kill the messenger” and “How to kill the fear” if you want to innovate, give people a culture in which they feel safe enough to do so.

Doing that often requires a paradigm shift in the CEO’s MAP, because culture, and the accountability required to make it real, all stem from the top.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 11th, 2006 at 12:16 pm and is filed under Business info, Culture, Leadership, Retention. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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