By Lauryn Franzoni

Dear SafetyXChange Members:

Innovation may be the most critical factor in success - both for companies and individuals. What is innovation? The guru of business strategy, Peter Drucker, describes it as "the specific instrument of entrepreneurship, the act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth."

The United States may be facing a crisis in innovation. There is concern among educators and government experts that we are losing ground in terms of engineering prowess to Pacific Rim nations. There's also growing pool of international engineering talent available for outsourcing. How does this affect your company and industry? Read on to find out.

The Innovation Factor

In a Cisco Innovation 2005 Study survey, business and information technology leaders cite innovation as the most critical factor in a company's success. Fifty-three percent of the 635 respondents surveyed by the independent research firm Momentum Research Group said that innovation has the greatest impact on competitiveness. (Twenty-six percent cited increasing employee education and skill levels.)

Other key findings:

• Cutting-edge technologies are clearly on the radar screen of business and technology leaders. While adding communications capability to a product or service was the most likely desired innovation at 32 percent, it was closely followed by location technology (24 percent) and data storage (22 percent). This indicates the emerging realization of what radio frequency identification (RFID) and global positioning satellite (GPS) technology will have on the future competitiveness of businesses.
• The overwhelming majority of business and technology leaders surveyed want to focus on modernizing and fixing the healthcare system. Healthcare was identified as the economic sector most in need of innovation by 53 percent of respondents. And just over 70 percent of those polled say that improving the system is the priority, not new medicines and treatments.
• Given the focus on innovation, it is not surprising that many business and technology leaders are seeking improvements in the education system. In particular, a solid majority of 58 percent cited a need for greater creative thinking and problem solving skills from students. A third of those polled called for stricter student requirements to accomplish this goal.

Innovation & Career Success

Branding yourself as an innovator and passing your creativity onto others is a great way to enhance your career. Success as an innovator is directly tied to your ability to accurately assess current trends. You also need the capacity to evaluate the impact of emerging technologies, government regulations, developments in the competitive landscape and even changes in the leadership of your own organization.

Is there anything you can do to enhance your ability to predict career change and hone your innovation skills? Yes. Change Leaders Inc. founder Marjan Bolmeijer offers the following suggestions to help your "innovator makeover":

• Gather information about your company's culture and about the level of risks the culture is willing to take around innovation.
• Don't look at your CEO as a role model. CEO behavior is not a good indicator of the level of acceptable innovation. The CEO of Oracle takes visible risks during ultra competitive sailing races. The CEO of Virgin Airline rides hot air balloons and takes more risks than most of us. However, what a company's public figure does is not always a reflection of the level of risk the organization is willing to accept.
• Take 5 to 10 percent more risk than the organization is willing to take. Not 25 percent, because that will be regarded as "unsafe" and you will come across as unreliable.
• Become an expert in selling your ideas internally and assisting others in overcoming initial resistance.
• Don't just rely on your good work to position yourself. Write for your company newsletter or develop an intranet site featuring all innovative ideas within the company.
• Your reputation as innovator will be rock solid once you have earned the right to focus on the strategic organizational question, "How do we attract, create and develop more innovators in the company?"

Conclusion

The benefits of becoming an innovator reach beyond self- interest. History is full of innovators who have died broke or unknown. When managers can recognize who on the team can take ideas to market and who can deliver business value, they find success.

Wishing you innovative career success!

Lauryn Franzoni
ExecuNet
www.execunet.com.

SUPERVISOR SUCCESS

As with any other safety leader, your success is based in large part on the strength of your supervisors. You need supervisors who understand your expectations and have what it takes to get the job done. How do you find people like that?

Maybe that's the wrong question to ask. The qualities of a successful supervisor aren't something that most people are born with. They need to be learned. So maybe instead of looking for the perfect supervisor, you should pay more attention to promoting your best employees and teaching them how to be good supervisors.

How do you teach supervisors to be effective? According to a recent poll of 500 managers who got promoted because they were successful supervisors, the most important things first-time supervisors need to be taught are the capacity to:

1. Motivate and get others to "go the extra mile"
2. Adapt to new and changing situations and help others do the same
3. Understand organizational goals
4. Establish productive relationships with managers
5. Delegate effectively.

Source: AchieveGlobal Study, www.achieveglobal.com.

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