Getting Ideas Adopted

Everyone is interested in getting their ideas adopted. But businesses report that only four percent of innovation initiatives succeed in meeting their financial objectives. Can we significantly increase our odds of succeeding at innovation? We argue an emphatic yes. Innovation is not simply an invention, a policy or a process to be managed; innovation is a personal skill that can be learned, developed through practice and extended into organizations.
We define innovation as the art of getting people to adopt change. We draw a distinction between invention and innovation: many inventions never become innovations, and many innovations do not involve an invention. We identify and describe eight personal practices that all successful innovators perform: sensing, envisioning, offering, adopting, sustaining, executing, leading and embodying. Together, these practices can boost a fledgling innovator to success. Weakness in any of these practices blocks innovation.

Speaker Details

Peter Denning is a distinguished professor of computer science at the Naval Postgraduate school in Monterery, California. In his early work he focused on operating systems, especially memory management and performance evaluation and was a pioneer in virtual systems. He was one of the four PIs on the CSNET project, which received the 2009 Postel Award from the Internet Society. He is a past President of ACM.

Bob Dunham is president and founder of the Institute for Generative Leadership in Boulder,Colorado, which provides management and leadership development programs, consulting and executive coaching services. He has taught thousands of students innovative approaches to leadership and management. He was a vice president at Motorola Computer Systems and Action Technologies, and also teaches at the Presidio Graduate School.

Date:
Speakers:
Peter J Denning and Robert Dunham
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