Do companies meet with internal resistance when they start thinking about managing innovation?
Sometimes companies see resistance from the traditional innovators. They’re the people currently getting rewarded and recognized for being innovators, and it’s threatening to them to think that everyone can do this. It’s important to enlist them and get them to understand that you’re giving them tools that can keep them ahead of everyone else because these tools are going to make them better innovators. Resistance may come from the finance department. It can be hard for IT professionals to measure things like employee productivity, and it’s hard for finance people to accept something that isn’t as easily measurable. It’s a challenge for an IT professional to go a finance person and say, “We would like to implement innovation as a discipline, and we need funding for tools.” The finance person, he wants to hear about ROI. What are some the things you think companies can do to get started? In our book, there’s a self-assessment that managers can take. I think the self-assessment is, in an
