Innovation Updates in March

2. Five Misconceptions in Innovation Management You Should Ignore

Being innovative also means being critical - of your organization's status quo but also of preconceived notions in order to find new ways to move forward. A recently published FORBES article discusses five common misconceptions in innovation management, some of which you may already be familiar with:

• New product development prototypes are cost-prohibitive.

Have you ever heard of a minimum viable product? You don't need a perfectly working prototype to present your solution and collect first feedback. It often can be simple and just show enough features to demonstrate how the product will solve a problem. This is an agile approach to product development and avoids investing a lot of effort.

• Innovation is centered on great ideas.

Innovation doesn’t start with ideas; it starts with information. Before ideating new products or services, you first need to understand your customers' problems or demands on the market. Once you have identified ideas with high future potential, you also need a plan to bring them to life that aligns strategy to execution. 

• Innovation will define a company’s culture.

Rather the opposite. Your company’s mission actually determines your innovation strategy. Before you develop new products or services, you need to know why you are developing them and make sure they contribute to your company's stated purpose. 

• Innovation processes and methodologies are fads.

It is important to consider that each business, including its mission and customers, is different. Rather than simply following new approaches such as Agile, Lean, or Stage-Gate Innovation, evaluate which method makes the most sense for your organization and adapt methodologies to your specific needs. 

• All research is good research.

To determine where to focus innovation efforts, organizations have to invest in research. However, for many companies, the investments do not produce results they can commercialize. Research should enable companies to gain insights from data on how to solve customer problems or leverage trends and technologies.

Keep in mind that widely held beliefs may have been true once, but you should constantly question them.

3. Our Trend of the Month: Green Skills Gap

One of the objectives of the Decade of Action is the prioritization of green skills across industries to better align environmentally-conscious practices and organizational objectives. 

Green Skills are the key capabilities required to create a sustainable and resource-efficient society. The push to develop green management skills calls for the upskilling of professionals across industries and educational systems to prioritize environmental sustainability as a key learning outcome, regardless of career path.

According to LinkedIn's Global Green Skills Report, in 2021, less than 1% of hiring pertained to green jobs, and half excluded green skills entirely. However, a strategic and vital shift is underway as governments, corporates, and civil society increasingly prioritize green skills to support sustainability and combat climate change. This means that at the current rate of change, demand for green jobs will outpace the supply of people with the relevant skills in the next five years. 

Fortunately, there is progress in growing green skills and emphasis on sectors like sustainable fashion, fleet management, and sales. Indeed, LinkedIn found that most jobs that call for green skills are not “traditional” green jobs but are roles intended to help sectors make the green transition. 

To help fill this gap, curricula, from early education to corporate training, must adopt an interdisciplinary approach to make sustainability a core competency. Educational institutions, governments, and communities will need to collaborate and think creatively, forming partnerships with businesses to develop the green skills capacity of the global workforce. 

The National University of Singapore is one institution that is pioneering the skills it views as essential in achieving net-zero emission pledges and global food security in the future. It has launched a new course module dedicated to meat alternatives. The module aims to set young food scientists on the path toward plant-based and cultivated meat R&D.

Carbon Co-op is a UK-based grassroots organization that provides building contractors with accessible and practical training on increasing home energy efficiency. It also helps connect contractors with potential customers and projects to transfer their new skills into real-world work opportunities.

Beyond having the right skills and qualifications, it is increasingly important for an organization’s values and practices to be transparent and resonate with its stakeholders—employees included. Citizen Kind is an ethical recruitment consultancy that is working to address this. It matches eco-conscious candidates with purpose-driven organizations. 

4. Fact of the Month: Future-Readiness of Top Tech Companies

A recent Harvard Business Review article highlights the most “future-ready” companies across four sectors, based on research by the IMD (International Institute for Management Development).

One of these sectors is technology. The technology sector is moving at high velocity, and executives need to be able to pivot quickly to avoid being left behind. Technology companies are characterized by flexible organizational structures that enable them to adapt rapidly to a changing business environment. The five top players in the industry Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, and semiconductor manufacturer AMD, exhibit, despite their size, a strong entrepreneurial outlook. They are willing to move away from their core business and possess the ability to scale quickly. This flexibility helps them stay ahead in a sector that is constantly changing. 

Read on here if you want to learn more about the scores and the factors on which the companies were evaluated.

5. Your Monthly Dose of Innovation

The Innovation Roundtable Summit is back!

The IRS is the world's largest gathering of business innovators - and we will be there. 
Meet us from May 10 - 12, 2022 in Copenhagen and

• connect with 600 innovation executives from 250 multinational companies.
• learn from corporate & academic speakers.
• share your challenges and gain new ideas at
  peer-to-peer roundtables and Labs.

Register here!