Innovation and Creativity

Innovation and Creativity:

Successful companies may need to adopt a new view of how to craft their strategies. The traditional view is that senior management hammers out the strategy and hands it down. Gary Hamel offers the contrasting view that imaginative ideas on strategy exist in many planes within a company. Senior management should identify and encourage fresh ideas from three groups who tend to be underrepresented in strategy making; employees with youthful perspectives; employees who are far removed from company headquarters; and employees who are new to the industry. Each group is capable of challenging company orthodoxy and stimulating new ideas.

NOKIA

Finnish mobile-phone giant Nokia has managed to remain the frontrunner in the mobile-phone industry with annual sales of $30.8 billion across 130 countries and a global market share of 38 percent, by installing a culture of innovation at all levels, using small, nimble, creative unit to let new ideas bubble up through the ranks. Innovations are as likely to come from a junior application designer as from a seasoned engineer. One example of how the company creates its culture can be seen in the company cafeteria where employees view a slide show as they eat. It’s not jus any slide show, but one of pictures taken with camera phones by some of Nokia’s 1,500 employees – part of internal corporate competition that rewards staff creativity. Nokia even has a watchword for its culture of continuous innovation: “renewal”.