Bright ideas need nurturing

Bright ideas need nurturing

PADDY Miller has been tracking corporate leaders for 20 years - watching them, writing down their thoughts, following them from job to job, country to country - in some cases, throughout their careers.

At companies including Abbott Laboratories, Bacardi, Hewlett-Packard, Boeing, Ericsson, Nike and Goodyear, he's tried to crack the elusive concept of innovation - who is good at it, how do you foster it, and once an idea has germinated, how it becomes reality.

Paddy Miller believes the thinking on innovation is skewed.

Paddy Miller believes the thinking on innovation is skewed.Credit:Louise Kennerley

And Dr Miller, professor at IESE Business School in Barcelona and co-author of forthcoming book The Innovation Architects, believes that much of what many managers think about innovation is wrong. It's not all about brainstorming. And it's not about trying to predict the future, by guessing what people might want or need in 10 years.

''The chances of doing that are fairly slim,'' Dr Miller says. ''There are opportunities around you all the time, that are sitting right in front of you, that you should be focusing on and making the most of.''


And it's not all about whether the boss is good at innovating, either. Not every chief executive can be Steve Jobs.

The real challenge of a corporate leader is to get other people to be innovative - and not just in head office, but in the far-flung corners of a multinational company's operations.

''You need other people to be innovative if you are running a global organisation. Your problem isn't are you an innovator, but are the folks in China or New Zealand? And how do I get to capture innovation in our culture in different countries? We don't tend to build into the skill set of most leaders the ability to create a space where other people will be innovative.''

Innovation can be a difficult concept to grasp. How does a corporate leader get people to be innovative? Can innovation be learnt or is it something you are born with?

Dr Miller - who, as he points out, is in the business of teaching innovation - is adamant it can be learnt. And the best way to spark innovation in the ranks? ''Ownership is one of the strongest things,'' he says. ''I think it's one of the most powerful elements of a creative environment, when people believe they have been innovative around their issues and creating solutions out of the problems that they have.''

As an example, Dr Miller points to TetraPak - a company with operations in more than 160 countries, including Australia. ''Every one of those countries feels that they own the product - that it is their own, they are doing it for their markets.''

Dr Miller is one of the speakers at Creative Innovation 2011, which will be held in Melbourne from Wednesday to Friday.

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