What’s Your Innovation Quotient?

April 26, 2013      Admin

Here’s an article — Teaching The Old Dog Some New Tricks — that caught my attention simply because of its opening teaser line …

“Business has only two functions: marketing and innovation.”

Now, the author isn’t sure whether he’s quoting management guru Peter Drucker or novelist Milan Kundera, but no matter.

Personally, I think it’s a meaty statement.

First of all, even the strongest of businesses must innovate or die. That applies to nonprofits as well as our for-profit brethren. I hope we have no disagreement there. That’s the message Roger was delivering in his recent post — The Courage To Change — about the American Cancer Society and its disengagement from direct mail acquisition.

Second, the point about marketing.

When I was interviewing years ago for the top marketing/communications job at Environmental Defense, the then-chairman, a former top corporate CEO, told me that as far as he was concerned, a marketer should have his/her hand in everything the organization does … including, in the case at hand, the program (i.e., the product). “Don’t let them tell you what to sell.”

That totally suited my view of things and was exactly what I wanted to hear. [Maybe he knew that!]

I was offered and took the job.

And soon a major donor plunked a sizable chunk on money on the table as an ‘R&D’ fund for our fundraising program. No better invitation to innovate than that!

So maybe I’ve had a charmed life. These two guys said in effect … ‘marketing rules’ and ‘go innovate’.

I was given the room and the means to innovate.

I’d say my Innovation Quotient (made up of one-third desire, one-third mandate and one-third means) in that job was 100 on a scale of 0-100.

What’s your Innovation Quotient? And what can you do to improve it?

Tom

2 responses to “What’s Your Innovation Quotient?”

  1. Simone Joyaux says:
    April 26, 2013 at 12:11 pm

    How timely, Tom. I’m at the Planned Parenthood Federation of America conference in Washington D.C. We just heard President Obama speak. And prior to the president, we heard Robert Safian, Editor, Fast Company, speak about living in a time of chaos… Disruption. Change. Disrupt on purpose to change. What produces innovation. The flux generation. (a recent article in the magazine). Lessons from Steve Jobs and many others about innovation – and how you build an organization for innovation.

    Some of my favorite sources about innovation:
    – Carl Sussman’s article in the Nonprofit Quarterly (in 2003) about building adaptive capacity to make change.
    – Walter Isaacson’s biography about Steve Jobs and then Isaacson’s article in Harvard Business Review about Jobs, Apple, and innovation.
    – Learning organization and systems thinking business theories about questions that produce conversation that generate learning that stimulate change.

    What fun!

  2. Jon says:
    May 2, 2013 at 3:46 am

    Darwin had it right, and it pertains to any business, and that “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”. To sum “”Innovate or Die”, and of course tell a few people. 🙂

    PS: Long time reader, first time responder…I’m a fan.

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