The Perspectives of Fifteen (15) North East Ohio Mid-Market Businesses
Thanks to all that attended The Entrepreneur’s Edge Accelerating Innovation Sessions facilitated at the Cleveland Global Center for Health The meeting was held at the brand new center (“The Med Mart”), exposing participants to Cleveland’s state-of-the-art collaborative facility.
In December, Teams from fifteen (15) North East Ohio Middle Market Growth Companies joined The Innovation Garage, facilitated by Jon Washington, with black-belt trained leaders from GOJO Industries. Sharing best practices, implementation successes and challenges.
How Can Mid-Market Organizations Build Success?
Innovation can apply to most all areas of any organization, small, mid market, non-profit, government entity, regardless of an organization’s structure or tax classification. Innovation can provide value by:
- Applying to products, processes or services. Both new and existing.
- Reducing time or making something more efficient.
- Solving small and simple problems that occur frequently.
- Solving large and complex problems that occur occasionally.
- Driving revenue to new heights.
- Making an organization operate more efficiently.
How Can Mid-Market Organizations Balance Tensions Between Creativity and Execution?
Spending too much time focusing solely on creativity and ideation by creating ideas alone? That’s all you’ll have in the end state. A long list of ideas that most likely will never be actioned.
Focusing the team solely on execution for an extended time without creativity and problem solving infused in the process? The end result will be that your pipeline will become stale and may drift into a continuous and energy draining doom loop of perpetual efficiency and cost reduction projects.
Balancing the natural tension between creativity and execution requires a guided process with simple frameworks to do innovation well. There is a need for both high levels of creative and critical thinking, gamification, and very strong execution skills as part of the ideal innovation process. Strong innovation programs recognize this tension and will manage the tension in a productive and positive way.
If the process could be reduced to one descriptive adjective, we would choose the term “craftsmanship” as the ideal descriptor. It takes a ton of skill, patience, craftsmanship and execution to pull off the process most effectively.
In the best and most transformative deployments, the ideal deployment requires an ideal blend of craftsmanship using analog methods and blending the right amount of people, process and technology as the amplifier.
The Five (5) Takeaways From the Sessions
With a diverse grouping of fifteen organization perspectives, the takeaway’s were significant.
- Covering the ideal definition of What is Innovation?
- Innovation works best as a system.
- Growth Mindset and Neuroscience are key enablers for success.
- Overcoming fear of failure is the biggest obstacle mid-market firms face in the region.
- It is the leadership team’s role to encourage experiments that reduce fear in the organization.
Ready to Learn More and Explore Next Steps?
One of the ideal and simple ways to find your organization’s answer to the question is to train up willing participants and experiment with the process. We offer three (3) levels of Innovation and Growth Mindset education for client teams that are willing to begin the journey.
If you’d like to learn more about our Innovation and Growth Mindset program offerings and how we support organizations to on the journey to get there, take a first step by reaching out to us at here.
At The Innovation Garage®, We help organizations grow. Providing education, tools, technology, and expert consulting in change management for strategy, innovation, and supply chain. Guiding leaders from organizations across the world to intentionally self-disrupt their offerings and organizations. We deliver world-class education, tools, and technology on how to craft business operating systems focused on long-term profitable growth.
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