RIIS - enabling innovation

The Research Institute for Innovation and Sustainability (RIIS) was born out of a passion for the successful and sustainable management of innovation and is situated at the Innovation Hub, South Africa.

Amanda Dormehl R

develop our own innovative capabilities, as well as harness the innovative opportunities that present themselves in the organisations we work for. The need for organisations to embed continuous corporate renewal has become imperative for sustainability in the current modern and dynamic business environment.

IIS recognises that our future impact, economic growth and overall sustainability will depend on how well we are able to

that is ecosystem driven. Another is their partnership with Sense2Solve around the Summit.

Part of their benchmarking capability is channelled by the annual South African Innovation Summit, to be held from 30 August to 01 September 2011. The Summit brings together innovation leaders from a wide variety of fields and disciplines. In 2011 it is themed ‘Innovation Legends – From Idea to Market’.

her commitment to enable innovation across the private and public sectors is palpable. Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Business Sustainability are Audrey’s primary focus areas in business. RIIS recently created the SA Solution Exchange and is a partner of NineSigma. The NineSigma network, which focuses on the high technical end of Open Innovations, has a database in excess of 2 million solution providers. They have already successfully implemented more than 2,000 projects.

Dr Audrey Verhaeghe is the CEO of RIIS and

Most of RIIS’s customers are in the private and public field, but they work with Small Medium and Micro Enterprises (SMME) as well. Their involvement has been to build capacity in SMMEs in terms of business skills such as finding funding, marketing and business models. They were also partners, with SAFIPA and COFISA, in developing a Business Building course specifically aimed at SMMEs.

trigger innovation in your organisation, “Firstly, it is normally driven from CEO level. If it is not, I would say, the first step for an individual who wants to drive this conversation with senior management is to believe that they can do something to influence innovation in their organisation. Then you need to explain why innovation is important. Ensure that innovation is mentioned in your value and mission statements. Highlight how the organisation can report on successes of the conversion of ideas. Discuss different methodologies that can be used such as Open Innovation or Crowdsourcing. When you use this language, senior staff will realise that innovation is measurable and manageable.”

RIIS believes that forming networks has been fundamental to their own success. One such example is the partnership with NineSigma

6 Management Today | September 2011

thing, that it is totally spontaneous. Audrey elaborates, “Proactive innovation, or creativity, is a thoughtful process and enabling it is not counter intuitive to it at all. Innovation still remains magical; it still gets born from the

Many people believe innovation is a magical Audrey shared some advice on how to