In this week’s thought leadership roundup, we take a look at Harvard Business Review’s plan for building a 90-day innovation engine, the four areas of business that need a dedicated thought leadership budget, and a webinar that discusses the disruption of traditional data integration tactics.
Build an Innovation Engine in 90 Days
From Harvard Business Review:
“For the past decade we’ve been helping organizations around the globe strengthen their innovation capabilities, and that work has taught us that there’s an important intermediate option between ad hoc innovation and building an elaborate, large-scale innovation factory: setting up a minimum viable innovation system (MVIS).
We borrow the language for this term from the world of lean start-ups, where “minimum viable product” denotes a stripped-down functional prototype used as a starting point for developing a new offering. “Minimum viable innovation system” refers to the essential building blocks that allow a company to begin creating a reliable, strategically focused innovation function. An MVIS will ensure that good ideas are encouraged, identified, shared, reviewed, prioritized, resourced, developed, rewarded, and celebrated. But it will not require years of work, fundamental changes to the way the organization runs, or a significant reallocation of resources.”
Our take: Two of the most common reasons that businesses fail to develop successful innovation programs are (1) because their leaders focus on anecdotal or generalized information as a basis, forgetting that a tailored, structured strategy is necessary; and (2) the powers that be believe making such a dramatic change is a poor investment, due to the time they think it will take to get it up and running, and because of the efforts they’ll have to focus on engagement and participation. Unfortunately, this unfounded speculation staunches innovation programs before they even have a chance to take root; thankfully, this step-by-step approach from Harvard Business Review is the ideal handbook for company leaders hesitant to take the plunge.
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4 Areas Of Your Company That Need To Budget For Thought Leadership
From Forbes:
“Thought leadership isn’t only a marketing vehicle; it’s a way to naturally draw recruits, brand advocates, investors, partners, and potential clients to your company.
The act itself is also a great training mechanism for you and your team. Organizing and expressing your thoughts through writing will keep your mind sharp, improve your communication skills, and make you a better leader. Each department can find ways to reach its target audience with a meaningful message, expanding the company’s influence overall.
Marketing is an obvious place to start a thought leadership program. But spreading its budget across multiple departments can limit the strain on the marketing team and provide significant benefits to several areas of your company.”
Our take: Sick as you may be of the jargon and regurgitated content surrounding much of thought leadership, that doesn’t make it any less crucial to the development of a strong company culture and an equally powerful company message. But that doesn’t mean that a company should blindly spend money or time pursuing it; as with most successful business ventures, strategic planning plays a vital role. Thought leadership is no different.
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WEBINAR: The Death of Traditional Data Integration
From the GigaOm:
“Join two industry thought leaders and pioneers, Dave Linthicum, SVP, Cloud Technology Partners and Gaurav Dhillon?, Co-founder and CEO, ?SnapLogic in this upcoming webinar about the state of data integration in 2015 and beyond and the future of the modern enterprise.
This webinar will show you how the game is changing, and what you can do about it right now. We’ll summarize the changes that are happening, review new and emerging patterns of data integration, as well as data integration technology that you can buy today that lives up to these new expectations.”
Our take: Traditional anything in business today is quickly becoming disregarded as outdated and useless, and anyone caught using time-tested techniques is often dismissed as conservative and stuck. Whether that’s true across the board or not, there’s no doubt that every aspect of a company is now subject to quick, dynamic changes, and that includes approaches that aren’t even that old to begin with. This webinar will demonstrate the evolving nature of data integration, and show attendees how they can make rapid adjustments to help their companies grow, rather than suffer, from new approaches and management tools in data integration.
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