STD: 10

Reading: Book
Innovation Training
By: Ruth Ann Hattori & Joyce Wycoff

Skill Set: 1 / Module: 6

Innovation and Creativity
 BOOK

Innovation Training
Ruth Ann Hattori and Joyce Wycoff

Recommendation
If you think innovation is a terrific idea, but have no clue how to
inculcate it into your organization, you’ve come to the right place. Ruth
Ann Hattori and Joyce Wycoff, innovation consultants, speakers, and
corporate veterans, have written an instructive guide that is short on
theory and long on practical application. To their credit, the authors spend
little time discussing innovation psychology and principles. They are
more concerned with outlining model training sessions and workshops
where participants can acquire the skills they need in the real world. The
book includes a CD with PowerPoint presentations and training materials
that you can print and distribute. Imbedding innovation is not a rapid
process, particularly within companies that have never embraced it.
Take-Aways
 Executives believe in innovation, but often don’t know how to
institute it.
 Innovation must create value for customers, stakeholders or
the organization
 Trainees are more receptive to innovation when it has a
practical application.
 Innovation is a multifaceted undertaking. Embedding it in your
organization takes a deliberate effort that cannot be integrated
quickly.
 Innovation follows certain principles: Change happens for a
reason, communication is crucial, corporate culture matters
and everything must happen in context.
 Innovation requires a new way of approaching problems and
opportunities.
 Outstanding innovators take calculated risks and are not easily
discouraged.
 Your company can teach innovation through a series of short
workshops, in longer sessions or individually.
 Creativity is a teachable skill, though good workshop
facilitators are crucial.
 Outstanding leaders create infectious energy around
innovation.
Summary
Innovation is Not Optional

Innovation is no longer an option for companies that must remain competitive.

In fact, innovation plays an increasingly larger role as technology continues to
extend the reach of the global marketplace. Organizational leaders understand
the importance of developing creative ideas that boost profits and add value for
customers, stakeholders and the company itself. Alas, the daily pressures of
managing a business and focusing on bottom-line results may preclude many
corporate leaders from guiding their companies to develop infrastructures that
deliver innovation. However, failing to teach and foster innovation may be a
luxury you can no longer afford.

“For too many years, innovation was considered something that either existed
or didn‟t. You either had it or you didn‟t, and if you didn‟t, too bad.”

One 1996 study showed that innovative companies have four times the profit
growth of non-innovative companies. In a 1998 survey of 400 companies, 70%
mentioned innovation as a priority. However, a survey of 350 organizations in
2000 indicated that fewer than 15% had acquired the technology to handle
innovation.

“Innovation is the result of competencies that are best developed through a

„learning by doing‟ approach.”

Although business owners and managers clearly recognize the benefits of

innovation, they just don’t seem to know how to embrace it. Many top
executives merely shrug, believing that their workers just aren’t imaginative or
that innovation cannot be taught. As a management practice, innovation calls
for using some basic techniques that experts can teach and that your employees
can incorporate into their daily practices.

“Changing a culture is not as simple as having a training session or putting a

bunch of posters on the wall.”

Innovation admittedly is a creative art, though it also requires administrative

expertise. At the organizational level, managers should try to introduce the
fundamentals of innovation to each employee. Schedule workshops for just an
hour each, or expand your offerings and provide short workshop sessions as
part of a more formalized full-day training program for a variety of employees.
When you launch specific innovation projects, you might require team
members to attend half-day workshops so you are sure they have mastered the
tools they will need. Training also can occur on an individual level, working
one-on-one with employees to cultivate their understanding of innovation and
to build their skills.

How Innovation Begins

Corporate executives don’t walk into their offices on random Monday

mornings and decide that their companies are going to become innovative. The
process is deliberate and multifaceted; it requires planning, education and
assessment. In fact, many successful organizations are already doing a variety
of innovative things correctly – they just can’t identify them. Unfortunately,
companies that can’t define their innovative practices run the risk of
implementing strategies that will destabilize rather than strengthen their
organizations.

“Innovation is not and should not be an isolated initiative in an organization.”

Innovation is defined as “people creating value by implementing new ideas.”

Innovation is not the same as creativity. Innovation training enables
organizations to identify and nurture the activities and policies that contribute
to their success. Sometimes innovation involves merely tweaking a product or
service for better results. Other times, innovation is radical, and can change an
entire company or industry.

Principles of Innovation

Establishing an organizational structure that facilitates innovation involves

building your company’s understanding of the following fundamental
principles:

 Change happens for a reason – Motivation for change stems from

being able to understand the impetus for innovation. Bigger challenges
typically inspire greater commitment and vigor. Regardless of the nature
of the changes, keep an eye on your main objective: to create value for
your customer.
 Communication is the linchpin – Innovation depends on the free
exchange of ideas and information. Your organizational structure,
philosophies and policies should allow – in fact, encourage – open
communication among employees, managers and people in different
departments. Corporate cultures that reward individuality and
discourage collaboration may be stifling innovation. Teamwork is
 essential to innovation, which also requires careful communication at
every stage from implementation to follow-up.
 Leaders lead – Even organizations that promote communication and
cooperation require charismatic leadership. Capable leaders envision
possibilities and inspire others. Innovation is impossible without a
unified effort from employees on every level, and that requires
committed, visionary, capable leadership.
 Culture matters – You can’t innovate in an organization that lacks the
proper mindset and infrastructure. Corporate culture evolves over time
as the byproduct of an organization’s written and unwritten rules,
beliefs, decisions and policies. Changing corporate culture is a huge
undertaking that requires re-examining behaviors, attitudes and
procedures. The first step is identifying the disparities between your
current culture and the one you envision in the future.
 Everything in context – Companies usually initiate a drive for
innovation in response to some event or circumstance. Maybe profits are
down, the market is shifting, the company is undergoing a merger or a
change in top management, the community is recovering from a natural
disaster or there’s a war. Recognize that forces outside your sphere will
always affect your business and your decisions.

Measure for Measure

Measuring the efficacy and results of training is a big challenge. CEOs may
even be reluctant to invest in training because they can’t identify bottom-line
results. Innovation training’s tools and workshops are designed to create
quantifiable results from collaborations and team projects as they increase
individual competency.

“As is true of most training, the value of innovation training is in its successful
application on the job.”

Employees respond more positively to training when they see that their efforts
bear fruit. They want opportunities to apply their new skills and knowledge to
real-life work situations. Effective innovation training includes practical
applications as well as theoretical background. Employees should be able to
turn their conceptual knowledge into measurable action. In addition to
instruction, your trainers and coaches are responsible for following up to be
sure that trainees incorporate their newly learned skills into their daily routines.
Practice is the only way to improve. Facilitators with a knack for teaching
training material in a compelling, actionable way are very valuable to your
company, particularly if they also can energize employees to innovate.

Feedback is Critical

Proper evaluation of innovation training unfolds in two important steps. First,

survey your participants immediately following their training sessions while
the experience is still fresh in their minds. Ask questions that will elicit their
candid impressions of the workshop, the relevance of the material and the
facilitator’s presentation skills. Ask whether the workshop met, exceeded or
fell below expectations, and why.

“Both infrastructure and advocacy must exist in an organizational system to

promote the free flow of information.”

A week after the session, send trainees a “bounce-back” questionnaire that

specifically measures how they have applied the on-the-job knowledge from
their training. Construct your questions to elicit this information:

 What specific aspects of the workshop impressed the participants? –

Failure to respond to certain central points of the presentation may
indicate that the instructor did not deliver that information effectively or
that your employees didn’t find it relevant.
 Which concepts and tools proved most valuable? – If several trainees
cite the same things, you may want to concentrate more on those
concepts or tools in future workshops.
 How have employees used these tools and concepts? – A workshop is
successful if the participants use the techniques in practical applications.
If your staff fails to apply workshop information, that indicates
problems with the content, delivery, management or leadership, or with
the corporate culture’s approach to innovation.
 What other concepts or tools would be helpful? – Respondents may
have outstanding suggestions for future workshops, including new
courses, or perhaps requests for more individualized coaching or a
mentoring program. This information can help the company’s leaders
and human resource managers determine what adjustments to make to
create a more innovative environment.

Breaking It Down

Innovation training normally begins with a one-hour workshop that provides an

introductory overview. Employees learn the basics of innovation and its
potential impact on each person and the overall company. This presentation,
which includes written exercises, is intended to encourage participants to
discuss the benefits of innovation, the opportunities for growth that it offers
and the roles of individuals in that process.

“Successful innovation often requires much experimentation and leaves many

failures in its wake.”

The next option is a second one-hour session entitled “Innovation Comes

Alive” that zeroes in on one of several aspects of innovation. You can use a
variety of learning activities, depending on the focus of the workshop. Repeat
the one-hour, hands-on programming format to tackle other facets of
innovation in subsequent sessions.

The Creativity Workshop

Many people find it difficult to think of creativity in concrete terms. You can
use a three-hour creativity workshop to explain the fundamentals of creative
thinking and discuss basic, yet potent, techniques to enhance individual
creativity. Use a variety of creative learning activities at this workshop to foster
an appreciation of various thinking styles and to give participants practice in
generating creative ideas.

“One of the underpinnings of innovation is making context – the big picture –

explicit for individuals and the organization as a whole.”

You don’t necessarily have to be part of a team-oriented initiative to jump-start

your creativity or innovativeness. Plenty of people are interested in learning
how to strengthen their existing competencies or developing new skills. The
idea behind this workshop is to identify the qualities that distinguish an expert
innovator and to design a strategy that lets each individual acquire those skills.

“Why is it that one of the first budgets to be cut in challenging times is

training?”

Masters of innovation typically share these characteristics:

 Open-mindedness – Innovation means exploring uncharted waters and

being receptive to new ideas and methods, even if it’s a bit
uncomfortable. Sometimes you have to take a chance to achieve a
breakthrough.
  Finding connections – Impressive innovation means being on the
cutting edge and discovering links that you weren’t aware of previously.
Finding a way to make a new idea work with existing technology is a
good example.
 Establishing priorities – Good innovators always put their customers
first. They are in tune with their customers’ needs and concerns.
 Keeping up – Top innovators keep abreast of developments in their
field and elsewhere. They know what’s going on in the business world.
 Aligning support – Innovation requires a unified effort and the ability
to work well with others. Outstanding innovators know how to sell their
ideas to decision makers and have the ability to enlist the support of
their colleagues.
 Moving ahead sensibly – Skilled innovators can identify the
differences between good and bad risks, and exercise foresight about the
consequences for individuals and the organization.
 Going with the flow – Excellent innovators understand project
management but don’t get sidetracked by unforeseen circumstances or a
change in plans. They are flexible and reasonable.
 Appetite for learning – Good innovators are not afraid to make
mistakes on the way to figuring out something new. They view setbacks
as learning opportunities. They analyze their successes and failures, seek
feedback and move forward.

About the Authors

Ruth Ann Hattori and Joyce Wycoff co-founded an innovation consultancy
and training company. Hattori designs programs to teach organizations how to
improve their collaborative and innovative practices. Wycoff is a speaker,
trainer and facilitator, and the author of four books,
including Mindmapping and To Do, Doing, Done.