How can you identify and develop the next generation of innovators in your company?

Absolutely, cultivating a culture of curiosity and resilience is vital for fostering innovation. As an executive, creating a safe and supportive environment encourages employees to ask questions, explore ideas, and take calculated risks. Recognizing and rewarding the process of learning and improvement, irrespective of outcomes, helps instill a positive mindset. Celebrating failures as opportunities to learn and innovate sends a powerful message, promoting a culture where trying new things is not only accepted but also celebrated for its potential to drive growth and progress.

Cultivating the next wave of innovators starts by encouraging a culture of curiosity and experimentation. Create a safe space where employees feel supported to ask questions, explore ideas, and test hypotheses. Emphasize that innovation is not just about outcomes but also about the journey of learning and improving. Reward this process and celebrate failures as valuable lessons, transforming them into stepping stones for future innovation. By fostering this environment, we don’t just grow individual talents; we nurture a collective culture of creativity and innovation, laying the groundwork for continuous breakthroughs in our companies.

Encouraging curiosity and experimentation isn't just about creating a cozy environment for ideas. It's about daring to challenge the status quo. In my journey, I've learned true innovation requires audacious goals and real autonomy. I've leveraged AI and ML to revolutionize businesses, not because it was the safe route, but because it was essential for survival and growth. Celebrating failures? Sure, but real progress comes from celebrating groundbreaking successes. Innovation demands taking calculated risks and pushing boundaries. It's about leaders who provoke and teams that dare to jump. This is how you cultivate not just innovators, but true industry disruptors.

If a company wants a long lasting success then it has to invest in innovation. Innovation is about turning a vision into a product or service. If leaders have the wisdom of innovation they can find out which one of their employees and colleagues has a spark of innovation. Usually peoples who have the qualities of curiosity, creativity, persistance, doing common things in a different way and problum solving attitude can be polished as innovators. They shall be choosen, encouraged and shall be given multiple tasks to Polish their innovative skills with all the possible support. Their creative work shall be praised and their mistakes shall be taken positively.

It's absolutely key to have an 'entrepreneurial' spirit. Be curious and dare to experiment, both for yourself and for your team. Choose your team accordingly. If people do not make 10 mistakes the first day in the job, they are not curious enough ;-)

Indeed, nurturing self-motivation and independence in innovators is key. Providing clear goals while allowing autonomy in achieving them fosters a sense of ownership. Delegating decision-making authority and resources demonstrates trust, empowering innovators to unleash their creativity. This approach not only enhances individual satisfaction but also contributes to a culture of respect and value, fostering a more dynamic and innovative work environment.

Autonomy and empowerment? Let's get real. Giving your team clear goals and letting them choose the path is Management 101. But if you want to ignite real innovation, it’s about pushing boundaries and questioning norms. In your roles, it wasn't just about delegating decision-making authority, was it? It was about inspiring your teams to exceed what's possible, not just meet expectations. That's true empowerment. It's about creating a culture where 'good enough' is never the standard. It's about leading, not just managing. That’s how you drive game-changing innovation.

Especially when it comes to innovation, giving liberty is the key In my entrepreneurial stint, the one thing that worked out in terms of innovation was to enable employees to think more, ideate together and even if the ideas were not suited, encourage them to improvise It is only when you do that people even bother to think beyond the scope you have already defined for them

Thinking out of the box can only be done when you have sufficient liberty to do so. This requires autonomy and empowerment. Lack of this will result in suboptimal outcomes

Embrace diversity and stop trying to work towards the one size fits all solutions. One size will mean no-one gets what they need to be successful. Think diverse, be diverse and act accordingly.

Diversity and collaboration, critical for innovation, right? But it's not just about hiring a mix of backgrounds. True diversity in innovation comes from challenging conventional wisdom and bringing in voices that fundamentally disrupt the echo chamber. It's about integrating diverse perspectives not just at the team level, but in the core strategy and decision-making processes. Did your roles leverage the full spectrum of diversity to drive innovation, or just tick boxes? It's about making diversity a cornerstone of innovation, not just a corporate slogan. This is how you spark groundbreaking ideas and real collaboration.

Making sure that the company does not cultivate only highly skilled professionals in a single sector, but hires and fosters the growth of multi-dimensional and curious people, capable of connecting the dots, receptive of weak signals around them, not afraid of challenging the status quo, open and transparent in their flow of thought about the why's and the how's

Absolutely, fostering adaptability and responsiveness among innovators is crucial. Providing regular and constructive feedback on performance, progress, and impact enables continuous improvement. Recognizing and rewarding achievements and innovations not only motivates innovators but also showcases their contributions to the organization, inspiring others. As an executive, creating a culture that values adaptability and responsiveness contributes to a dynamic and innovative work environment.

Feedback and recognition? In my experience, it's more than routine appraisals. In my leadership roles, I've always emphasized challenging the team, not just offering praise. I've led projects that pushed the tech envelope, where feedback meant 'what's next?' rather than just 'well done.' True recognition is about spotting and fostering disruptive potential. For me, feedback has been a relentless drive for improvement, pushing my teams out of their comfort zones. In such a culture, groundbreaking innovation isn't just encouraged, it becomes a standard expectation.

Training and development is crucial and essential to any organisation and its life blood of any efficient organisation. Embracing the culture of learning is essential to the productivity of innovators. Innovators must learn, unlearn and relearn as we live in fast paced world with ever changing consumer needs. Hence organisations must dedicate a sizeable portion of their balance sheet to ensure constant training of innovators to remain competitive.

Nurturing future innovators means consistently providing constructive feedback and recognition. Regularly assess and guide their performance, progress, and impact, focusing on continuous improvement and growth. Celebrate their achievements and innovations, making their successes visible across the organization. This recognition not only boosts motivation but also sets a standard of innovation. Such an environment doesn’t just develop individual talents; it fosters a culture where innovation is valued, encouraged, and integral to the organizational ethos. By doing so, we ensure our company continually evolves, driven by a generation of innovators inspired to create, adapt, and lead.

The key to building confidence in you team lies in providing them with opportunities for learning and growth. I've found that some of the most fulfilling experiences have arisen when I've shared my time and expertise with others.

Investing in training and development does not always need to be a financial investment. A commitment to training and developing your team can begin with a simple investment of your time to help them find and effectively utilize free resources tailored to their learning style. A few examples include creating a list of relevant TED Talks they can watch on YouTube, introducing them to a mentor or role model within your own network, or even suggesting a book they can find at the library.

Cultivating a vision and purpose is pivotal in nurturing innovators. By clearly communicating the company's vision and aligning it with our mission and values, we inspire our team to find passion and purpose in their work. This approach is more than just a motivational tactic; it's a strategic alignment of individual efforts with broader organizational goals. By connecting their work with the needs of customers and society, we not only foster a sense of responsibility and drive but also ensure that our innovations are relevant and impactful. This vision-driven approach is key to creating an ecosystem where innovation thrives, aligning personal ambitions with the company's direction, and catalyzing positive change.

Cultivate vision and purpose is very paramount to raising the next generation of innovators. All innovators should have a clear understanding of the vision and purpose which is communicated very articulately. This would help them in understanding how their tasks add up to the overall vision of the business and would inspire them to work efficiently as they can see the evidence of their output in the organisation.

Connect the next generation workers with front line, customer-facing employees (and directly to customers). Break down silos. Look beyond org charts and continually reinforce the value of holding the customer need above other activity. Empower those people with innovation ideas to own the resolution/implementation across teams, regardless of their official title. Pull others across functions into the mix and hold out the young worker with the idea as the leader of the innovation. Demonstrate you don’t need title and tenure to drive better outcomes. Build a culture of supporting one another in the interest of the business and customer. Celebrate innovation, experiments and some failures in this too!

Calling out a strategy having an IMS. " Idea Management System "within the organization will bring you the next generation to Haverst the innovations diplomatically, start with innovation challange/award letting everyone to post thier ideas and short list who brings the creativity to have a Members to the IMS team and put them to work cross functionaly where the diversity of innovation acclarating towards the next gen. Next up to the Management to fostering a learning culture to bring the maximum impacts while setting up simple overlook module to evaluate how your new Gen is transforming which also an opportunity to take proactive precautions at early stage and you should be knowing where to drive.

Organizations that embrace innovation must create a culture that challenges conventional thinking about success and failure. One way to do this is creating a culture where there are no bad ideas. Encourage sharing by giving positive feedback even you know an idea is not practical. There's rarely a need to correct someone in public. Another important dimension to this is how you react when a new idea doesn't deliver the outcomes we expected. If it's viewed as a 'failure', people will hesitate to share ideas in the future because no one wants to fail. Most new efforts either don't work or require improvements. Frame things as learning lessons for the business, not failures. Remember: innovative companies are comfortable with calculated risks

As a young engineer I was given 2 years to develop any project I felt was worthy. 8 privatr and public companies I stated in 6 decades later and thousands of innovators.

One of the things that I did not see mentioned, but that is vital is to approach innovation with an open mind. Behavioral science teaches us that one of the best ways to avoid introducing biases into the innovation process or failing to properly identify the next generation of innovators is to be closed-minded. If we look at previous innovators (Zuckerberg, Gates, Jobs, Woz), we find people who others famously overlooked (i.e., IBM) because of closed-minded thinking.