Innovation
With the steep increase in market shifts, consumer demands and competitive forces these days, companies and their employees are expected to be more innovative not just by coming up with more innovative ideas but also by adjusting with the innovative changes happening within the organization. The educational system also does not pay much attention to the creativity and innovation of an individual, and as the landscape shifts and innovation becomes more important, the innovation skills gap is apparent and increasing. Therefore, innovation has become the key to business success. Since competition is ever increasing with rapid changes in technology, organizations are focusing on creativity and innovation in business processes, product lines and management practices. If organizations are to come up with innovation and creativity consistently, especially when finding quality solutions for business problems, transformational change is critical.
Innovation helps an organization to stand out of the traditional business and marketing. It motivates to innovate plans and to come up with novel solutions to the existing problems. In addition, innovation is not something which can be introduced within a day or two. It has to be integrated with the organizational culture to get the best results out of it. Training on innovation make them realise the usage and impact of innovative ideas in an organization, and make people develop their innovative skills with the help of various techniques and tools to generate ideas and solve problems. It also gives the opportunity to apply the methods and tools to improve areas of their own work.
Transformational change does not imply a slight improvement to business propositions. It refers to a change that a make a valuable impact. A facilitator is an expert who can bring about this transformational change in people impacting business proposition. The facilitator also ensures that people’s engagement and commitment are consistent with transformational change.
When a group is brainstorming on a business proposition, the facilitator is one who facilitates the group towards creative thinking process or innovation. Powerful questioning techniques used by the facilitator enables the members of the group explore more, evaluate paradigms and build on ideas. The very purpose of brainstorming is to build on ideas helping people to become more constructive and innovative. The facilitator helps the members of the group evaluate paradigms and facilitate a shift in paradigms provided they are helpful in exploring possibilities. Shifting of paradigms is often difficult because it has been the framework which has worked in the past. However, exploring possibilities often leads to innovation. The facilitator taps the creativity in the members of the team through exercises and activities.
Innovation can be blocked by obstacles such as lack of support within the team, past innovations failure, lack of organization of the process of innovation, difficulty in choosing because of the enormous size of information, etc. The key role of the facilitator is to address these blocks and help the members of the team invoke change. A facilitator can facilitate innovation only when the organization or the company advocates innovation and creativity and has a culture supporting it. But a supportive innovative culture can also have a lot of positive outcomes like:
- Understand how to promote and manage a dynamic innovat
- Analyse various business models of innovation and the role of advancing technology in innovation
- Explore the types of innovation and gain clarity on challenges of innovation
- Identify the various innovation enablers
- List the various tools and techniques for generating innovative ideas
- Discover the benefits of innovation to business