Every business needs to innovate, and innovation is everybody’s business now. You can’t rely anymore on leaving innovation to an R&D team – you must involve everybody.
That’s the big idea behind the book “The Idea-Driven Organization: Unlocking the Power in Bottom-Up Ideas”, by Alan Robinson and Dean Schroeder.
It’s a simple and compelling idea. After all, your front-line employees interact most with customers, and see your products and services in action – so they are often the best-placed people to innovate. They are also smarter, savvier, and more talented than ever before, so they want to contribute – and will, if you encourage them.
The authors first developed this idea in their book “Ideas Are Free”, and now expand on that to show you how to build this into your organisation. Even if you haven’t read the first book, you will still get value from the second.
This book tackles the big challenges of turning your entire organisation into an innovation-centric and idea-driven organisation. It addresses this at a strategic level, looking at issues such as:
- Understanding why managers and leaders are blind to ideas
- Aligning strategy, structure and goals to innovation
- Avoiding simplistic solutions (such as electronic suggestion boxes)
- Implementing this throughout your entire organisation
This book is pitched at a high enough level to suit senior leaders in larger businesses. However, the ideas and principles apply to organisations of any size.
