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Strategic Open Innovation Will Restore Your People’s Passion
What really drives a business? Is it sales? Or possibly marketing? Products and services? Or, customer service? To an extent, all of the above. But what is the driver behind all these activities? Something of greater significance has to be at the core, something that lights a red hot fire fueling all that the organization seeks to accomplish. To become!
In growing, developing, exciting companies, that something is ‘passion.’ An enthusiasm that ignites people’s drive and imagination to accomplish things that are far above and beyond ‘average.’
Being Average Just Isn’t Good Enough Today, You Need Passion
Average products and services, average customer service, average … just doesn’t cut it in today’s fiercely competitive global marketplace. And who wants to be average anyhow? Are your people excited about working for an ‘average’ company? Do you want to lead an average organization?
Under Steve Jobs, Apple wasn’t average. Under John Chambers, Cisco hasn’t been average. Under Gary Kelly, Southwest Airlines is anything but average!
John Rinaldi owns a company that produces innovative controls for industrial applications. Real Time Automation in Brookfield, WI, is the company. Six times a year he sends out a newsletter to the company’s customers, suppliers and employees. Both my wife and I are always eager to read it because John writes with humor and humanity, which makes it ‘fun’ to read as well as highly informative about the company’s products.
Here is an excerpt from an issue in which he wrote:
Without passion to motivate you in any job, you just can’t deliver value to an organization. Delivering value is one of the real keys to me. I say this over and over. You guys all judge us on the value we deliver year after year. You’re going to expect us to deliver more value to you next year than this past year. That means more products, even faster and easier user configuration, better support, an easier to use website, a fast product selection guide and on and on. To do that every single one of us at RTA has to make a commitment to personally deliver more value to the organization than we did last year.
That’s the only way RTA can deliver more value to you. And only if that happens can we expect more success next year than this year. That’s how the system works.
One of my most important jobs is to make sure that we accomplish that for you.
Commit Now to a Renewed Passion to Innovate
Are you passionate about what you do? About what your business does? And are you passionate about doing it even better in 2017 than you are doing in 2016? If so, then you had better be passionate about employing the power of Strategic Innovation to achieve that goal. The days when you could out perform your competition by working longer and harder are gone forever.
In today’s increasingly globally competitive world, the only way to win is to do whatever your company does ‘smarter’ and smarter means employing strategic open innovation. More of the same will not win the day. That ‘old dog doesn’t hunt anymore.’ Yesterday’s ways don’t win today’s competitive battles, much less tomorrow’s.
Passionate People Innovate!
Creating a organizational culture that demands and empowers breakthrough innovation is an essential leadership passion today. Incremental innovation, although beneficial because it can result in an immediate sales and profitability increases, alone will not protect you from marketplace disruption.
Only strategically directed breakthrough open innovation will, because it enables your organization to become the disruptor of your industry and markets. As John Chambers, CISCO’s Visionary CEO, told a global audience of suppliers and customers in 2015, “Either we disrupt or we get disrupted!“ There is no longer any third alternative.
Each day you hesitate merely increases the odds that someone else will act first. And it may not even be a current competitor. In fact, it most likely won’t be. Today, most market disruptions originate from outside of that industry’s current players. If you wait, you will probably never see it coming. BLINDSIDED! That’s is what happens to companies that delay!
You will either become the Disruptor or you will become the Disrupted! There will be no middle ground. Which will it be?
The new year is nearly upon us. To achieve breakthrough results in 2017, you need to take action TODAY!
by John Di Frances
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