Category: Innovation

American technology companies once led the way in developing breakthrough products and services. Today, many firms seem to have lost their innovation mojo.

AccuWeather was a pioneer in harnessing modern weather forecasting for business purposes, then in democratizing weather information, and most recently in harnessing big data to improve the company’s weather services for customers and for everyone affected by the weather.

Exelon is a Chicago-based public utility—a traditional, conservative firm. But by some of the moves taking place lately under CEO Christopher Crane—including a new “intrapreneurship” initiative and a flirtation with entrepreneurs known as “Dancing with the Startups”—Exelon seems to be charting a course of reinvention that is unusual for such an old-line concern. And chiefs in other traditional verticals might want to take notice.

The “corporate unicorn” of creative disruption has an allure, and there are certainly times when radical change is required. But while dramatic stories of disruption make great headlines, for far more organizations, innovation focused on achieving significant improvement in existing lines of business is a surer—and more profitable—bet for driving actual results.

Successfully growing your business requires that your leadership team be nimble enough to foresee future changes in your market, and smart enough to overcome challenges your business faces in the present. In both cases, having an executive team with a high creativity quotient will enable your organization to be better prepared to deal with these issues. Here are 4 techniques you can use to create and foster a more creative leadership team.

As companies battle it out in today’s hypercompetitive markets, where traditional forms of differentiation are now just commodities, the primary competitive weapon has become an organization’s capacity for radical and continuous innovation. CEOs wishing to lead from the front will need to understand how to dramatically improve this capacity to give their companies a strategic advantage in the new global innovation war.

While innovating and thinking outside the box may have burned out as corporate buzzwords, being able to turn the status quo on its head is what ultimately separates leaders from followers.