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INNOVATION
Innovate to create
The power and importance of innovation cannot be underestimated, accoording to Havard Business School’s Rosabeth Moss Kanter. GRAINNE ROTHERY reports
ADDRESSING IBEC’S HR LEADERSHIP SUMMIT IN DUBLIN RECENTLY AS THE KEYNOTE SPEAKER, ROSABETH MOSS KANTER OPENED HER PRESENTATION BY SUMMING UP WHAT FOR MANY IS ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT ASPECTS OF INNOVATION AT THE MOMENT. “Innovation plays many roles, but I know that without it, we don’t create jobs,” she said. Jobs come from new efforts, improvements and new markets. They come from growth.” Speaking after her talk, Kanter, who is Harvard Business
School’s Ernest Arbuckle Professor of Business Administration, makes the point that successful innovation doesn’t always have to be about radical change. Frequently, it’s about embracing opportunities to use existing assets in a different way and incorporating the opportunities that are created by change. “Sometimes innovation is to take your greatest asset and to
find other ways to build on it,” she says. “That kind of creativity I like a lot, because it’s not the same thing as writing new software or inventing a new drug. It’s a lot simpler. It comes from taking this asset or this thing and using it several different ways.
62 INNOVATION IRELAND REVIEW Issue 7 Autumn/Winter 2013
“What happens to companies in decline is that they start to
reach the limits because they are not creative about the next step, about the next wave, about using their assets, finding new partners and incorporating new technology.” For organisations, being creative about the next step involves stepping into the unknown. Innovation by definition means that it’s not safe, Kantar says. “You can’t justify it to your CEO by saying we’ve benchmarked and 29 other companies are doing it so it’s safe for us to do. Once you do that, it’s not innovation anymore.” As an example, she talks about her own experience recently
at Harvard Business School, where, along with some of her colleagues, she developed the idea of the Advanced Leadership Fellowship, a programme aimed at experienced and highly accomplished leaders who want to apply their talents to social problems. “We have invented a new stage of education,” she says. “And
that came from a few of us sitting around and thinking about the fact that Harvard Business School was celebrating its 100th anniversary [in 2008] and that somebody had to dream
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