Secrets of Top Innovators

Top innovators consistently drive success via a number of key strategies that may not be oblivious. One measure of these companies is the industry standard of sales per square foot. Despite the fact that these companies represent a diverse sampling of industries — from gadgets to gold to golf shirts — almost all of them have woven their success from common innovation secrets. Here is the list of the top ten companies and their sales per square foot:

1. Apple: $5,626

2. Tiffany & Co.: $2,974

3. Coach: $1,820

4. Lululemon Athletica: $1,731

5. GameStop: $1,009

6. Costco Wholesale: $998

7. Signet Jewelers: $955

8. Polo Ralph Lauren: $904

9. Whole Foods Market: $867

10. Best Buy: $831

So what is it that these star performers are doing to put up such extraordinary numbers? They innovate by using one or more of the following secrets.

Flexible Leadership Driven by the 3C's

It's often not what a leader does but rather how they do it that makes the most impact. While some are, take charge in your face and others are content to play an off-stage role and work behind the scenes, all 21st Century Leaders should be driven by the 3Cs: context, circumstance and consequence. Leaders need to be flexible and apply a leadership style that fits the situation. Considering context, circumstance and consequence is a good way for a leader to determine how involved to be and what style to employ. Here are some guidelines:

Myths That Inhibit Innovation

The first step on the way to inspiring innovation is to ruthlessly expunge the romantic myths that surround it — they often stop us from seeing the fresh ideas that are right in front of us. Here are four of the biggest myths about innovation, along with tips for seeing your way around them:

Leading via Innovative Risk Management

Leading via innovative risk management does not mean closing your eyes and taking a leap. Bravery (or stupidity) has nothing to do with it. It means taking steps to heighten your sense of control, and reduce the “unknowns”, then risk is no longer even a consideration. When you are in control and unafraid you don’t have to take risks. You get to make decisions instead.

Here’s the leading via innovative risk management process:

Most Innovative Companies

For over a decade, FORTUNE magazine has published its listing of the World’s Most Admired Companies, surveying 15,0000 executives and financial analysts on their perceptions of Fortune 1000 and Global 500 companies across more than two dozen industries. Companies are ranked across nine attributes including: their ability to attract/retain talented people, quality of their management teams, social responsibility, how well they leverage corporate assets, their financial soundness and long-term investment value, their ability to compete globally, their innovativeness, and the quality of their products and services.

Here is the list:

Innovation Requires Embracing a Risk Mentality

Who are the leaders that drive innovation? It’s not the ones that sit back and takes no chances. A lot of us have tendencies that incline us to avoid risk. It’s much easier to take the safe path. And, honestly, there’s nothing wrong with being safe. But just as being safe reduces your risk of failure, it also reduces your risk of success. Innovation requires the ability to embrace risks where there is potential for payoff. Who are the leaders that drive innovation by embracing risk? They include people like:

Developing an "Innovation Co-Creation" Mindset

Next-generation innovations will predominantly emerge at the intersection of disciplines, technologies, domains, markets, and people. 21st Century Leaders need to leverage diverse competencies across the ecosystem developed by opening up innovation within the organization and taking innovation beyond its boundaries - to all stakeholders.  Innovation Co-creation is the way forward.

Innovation Co-creation is a new innovation model for tomorrow's enterprises. Innovation, the world over, is moving from being a firm-centric (all innovations come from ones own own resources) endeavor to the one centered on co-creation (leverage innovations and resources from across the ecosystem). There are a number of crucial aspects of co-creation that can accelerate innovation and generate sustainable growth.

Innovation Using The “Freemium” Business Model

A recent study by Flurry Analytics found that mobile phone games that are free to download, are actually making more money than those that charge. Rather than asking $0.99 to download a game you have never tried, these companies let you download the app for free, then entice their most avid players into paying quite a bit more than $0.99 for in-game virtual goodies like farm crops or power boosters. In June 2011, among the top 100 games in the iTunes store, free games generated almost twice as much revenue as games that charged to download.

Offering your innovative products and services for free, and charging your more committed customers for premium services, is actually a common strategy. This business model is often called “freemium,” a term coined by Jarid Lukin and popularized by venture capitalist Fred Wilson.

The freemium business model works like this: Everyone gets your product or service for free, forever. But those customers who really like it, and find most value in it, will have a strong temptation to upgrade to a “premium” (paid) service which has lots of additional goodies. It is, at heart, a strategy of pricing by customer segmentation. I've developed some key considerations in developing and benefiting from the freemium model.

Leadership, It's About How you Say It

Communication is about content and delivery, fifty-fifty. But when it comes to leadership, it’s all about the delivery. Of course what you say matters, but how you say it, how you relate to folks, is what differentiates great leaders from the pack.

That means you can have innovative ideas, indeed you must, but if you can’t deliver them in a way that connects with people and relates to them in a meaningful way, you won’t get results. I've identified five things everyone can do to improve delivery so that innovative leadership becomes a reality. So, wherever you are in your journey to the top, I’m sure these 5 tips will help to improve your delivery so folks will want to be a part of whatever it is you’re doing.

Innovative Thinking- The Process and Tools

To reap the benefits of innovative thinking and apply it to a business problem, start by asking four strategic questions, What is, what if, what wows, and what works? Essentially, these are translated as:

1. Assess the marketplace, get close to consumers to understand their behavior, talk to users;
2. Brainstorm and write down hypotheses; dream up your optimal, best-case-ever outcomes to a challenge; set aside constraints and fears to loosen up creativity;
3. Cull options down to a manageable number that will “wow” the customer, combining upside value while presenting profit potential;
4. Go into the marketplace with options and test the solution, product, or service with consumers, invite customers to co-create, and integrate feedback.

I've developed a number of tools to flesh out the answers to these four key process questions. Try using these four tools as part of your innovation process:

Leadership Styles, Which One Are You?

Understanding leadership styles requires more than knowing leadership personality traits, achievements, or whether they are ‘transformational’. Modesto Maidique, a visiting professor at Harvard Business School defines a six-level typology of leadership. A review of her work provides an explanation of what organizations and employees can expect from each type of leader.

Here are her six main leadership styles:

Innovation powered by Entrepreneurship

Innovation is powered by entrepreneurial thinkers. The number of entrepreneurship courses nationally has grown from 250 in 1985 to more than 5,000. This is now the hottest degree for the ambitious with dreams of becoming billionaires before age 29. At the Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour, a series of conferences for aspiring young entrepreneurs, hundreds of high school and college kids were feverishly taking notes. The tour, which is only five years old, will attract an estimated 20,000 students this year. All this activity is in response to a critical innovation gap. What is the innovation gap and how can the risks associated with it be mitigated?

Crowd Sourcing Innovation

Can innovative idea generation succeed when working with collaborators? Is it better to have lots of innovative ideas to choose from, or a few of higher quality? The answer will help you decide whether you approach hundreds of idea-generators using a technique know as crowd sourcing or bring together a few brilliant minds. Innovation requires both, and here's when to use what.

Adaptive Leaders Drive Innovation Via Failure Forward

Innovative leaders know how to foster innovation and tackle tough problems in an increasingly complex economy. One key to success is to embrace trial and error, develop the courage to risk and know failure–and adapt from those failures with adjustments - Accept Risk of Failure.

Innovative leaders face some challenges in large organizations. Big companies offer an attractive machine for carrying out correct decisions, the power of a team all pulling in the same direction, and clear responsibilities producing a proper flow of information up and down the chain of command. But, every one of these assets can become a liability…the big picture can become a self-deluding propaganda poster, the unified team retreats into group think, and the chain of command becomes a hierarchy of wastebaskets, perfectly evolved to prevent feedback from reaching the top.”

Adaptive and innovative leadership focuses on accepting and tolerating failure. Here are three tips toward adaptive and innovative leadership:

Innnovation Quiz

Innovative leaders get out and proactively seek insight from their people about customer feedback, trend patterns and other critical organizational topics. They also have to allow a sense of autonomy within the ranks in order to encourage ownership of job responsibilities. This kind of autonomy allows for, among other benefits, a full- picture perspective of customer sentiment and loyalty to emerge.

How up to speed are you on the innovative ways of companies and high-profile leaders present and past? Take this quiz and find out.

Innovation Killers to Avoid

A lot of things can go wrong on the long journey between the birth of an innovative idea and its actual implementation. Potential breakthroughs fail for many reasons, with even worthy concepts falling victim to the hazards of the development process, a situation that is all the more perilous in this era of stripped-to-the-bone budgets and thin staffs.

The pitfalls for innovation are more likely the result of bad planning than a lack of creativity. There can be a failure to appreciate communications skills, or confusion about what exactly innovation is. In the end, a successful outcome is as much about people as it is intellectual brilliance.

Here are eight innovation killers to avoid:

Are you Engaged?

Only 3 of 10 employees are engaged by their work, according to industry research. While prospects of a future downsizing can certainly act as one type of motivation, workers need more than the threat of a pink slip to feel emotionally committed to company objectives. This is especially true when they’re asked to take on added duties without additional compensation and/or career advancement.

Here are five innovative leadership best practices to keep people engaged by their work:

Two Factors Essential to Leadership Success

David Gergen, author of Eyewitness to Power, The Essence of Leadership Nixon to Clinton, a superb study of presidential power, is correct that the measure of a leader is the willingness to confront problems and seek solutions. That comes down to two factors that are essential to leadership success:

How to Innovate in the 21st Century

It has never been easier or cheaper to alter the direction of a business, and companies that don't lead and innovate in response to changing market conditions may not survive at all. In an economic downturn, innovation isn't your best friend, it's your only friend. You don't need to be Steve Jobs to come up with a novel business idea. Nor is innovation all about high-tech inventions or new products. As many successful leaders will tell you, incremental ideas can be just as important as breakthroughs.

But how do you find that clear, purposeful frame of mind amid the pressures of modern business life? What makes for an innovative company? How much should owners listen to their employees? Is there an ideal company size for generating good ideas? Does time off get the juices flowing?

Here are some tips from the trenches of modern leaders and innovators.

Training Key to Development of New Leaders

In too many cases, people find themselves promoted to leadership positions without being given enough training or guidance to succeed at their new jobs. In fact, one-third of employers say they do not teach first-time leaders important skills such as budget oversight and project management, according to a survey from the Institute for Corporate Productivity.

Becoming a Recognized Expert in Innovation

How do you get to be considered an innovation expert? It helps if you are a bestselling author who promotes their books and brand on national television, or a university professor who has studied their subject for decades. But there is another kind of expert. It can be a person who is well-known and respected within their industry, frequently delivering key notes at conferences and winning plum consulting gigs. Here are the following five things anyone can do to start developing a recognized brand.

Strategic Leadership, Outside the Ability of Most CIO's

What does it take to transform from a department head to a respected, company-wide strategic leader? Apparently, much more than CIO's are currently delivering, according to a new survey from Chally Group. The performance-measurement firm recently surveyed top executives worldwide for its Global Leadership Research report, to come up with a better sense of what organizations need from leaders these days—as well as which departments typically serve as the farm-team for C-level executives. The bad news for IT? The most elite of the C-suite talent doesn’t generally come from the tech side. On the positive side, the report also sheds insight on valued qualities of senior leadership to which any executive can aspire, as well as leadership-killing characteristics to avoid. Some 1,400 top-level executives worldwide responded to the survey.

Here are the key strategic leadership requirements and the top five leadership killers. The most telling stats are:

Leadership and Talent, Two Different Attributes

Talent and leadership are separate attributes, but people too often regard them as one and the same. Talent is what you do well. Leadership is your ability to bring others to common cause. Anyone in a position to hire should heed the difference. Hiring managers promote or recruit people for their ability to produce results. That's good hiring. But everyone should carefully evaluate candidates' leadership abilities.

For example, super sales pros make ideal solo performers but not always team players. A leader has to understand the nature of team and be willing to step forward to pull people together for common purpose. Team members, on the other hand, motivate themselves with the goal of individual achievement.

When considering someone for advancement to a leadership position, ask three questions:

Can You Spot an Innovative Opportunity?

Innovation happens when a team comes up with something brand new and brings it to market with astonishing success. But innovation does not always have to be about launching The Next Big Thing. CIOs, for example, constantly depend upon innovation to keep their organizations ahead of competitors. This quiz tests your knowledge of the kinds of innovations that enabled companies across a wide range of industries to achieve success. Can you spot the innovative concept with the company that put this innovation to good use. Questions and answers are based on the case studies featured in the book "Breaking Away: How Great Leaders Create Innovation That Drives Sustainable Growth – And Why Others Fail".

Q: When customers said they didn't want to post their photographs on social network sites, which cosmetic company came up with a digital, customized “perfect look” tool that women could have e-mailed directly to them?

A: Estee Lauder, as part of its “Your Beauty, Your Style, Your Profile” campaign.
Key Takeaway: Listen and learn from your customers' comments on Web sites and in social media.

Q: Which toy company used the power of narrative to turn a $30 million product into a $500 million-plus brand?

A: Hasbro, which sparked a sales surge and movie franchise by creating intriguing plot lines to revive Transformers. Key Takeaway: Use good storytelling to sell your vision.

Q: Which business had achieved innovation by answering this question: “If file-sharing works for addresses, documents, music and movies, why can’t it transfer voice data?”

A: Skype, which found no reason not to make it happen. Key takeaway: Innovation often stems from asking: “Why not?”

Q: Which food giant broke off a brand’s highly associated alignment with one particular product to embrace a more diversified approach?

A: Kraft, which greatly expanded its customer base by promoting Philadelphia Cream Cheese as a food for desserts, late-night snacks, tailgating, etc.Key takeaway: Think about broader applications for existing resources.

Can you think of other examples that demonstrate the critical ability to spot an innovative opportunity?

Are you Prepared to Lead, Survey finds most are not

You may think of being promoted as the reward for all your hard work, but is this also a case may wish you were better prepared. For a significant percentage of new managers being prepared to lead is an issues if a new CareerBuilder survey is to be believed. The nationwide poll of nearly 4,000 workers revealed that finally getting on to the next rung of the career ladder can cause some serious stress.

The survey revealed that more than a quarter (26 percent) of new managers felt underprepared for their new responsibilities and a whopping 58 percent reported receiving no management training. So what did these fledgling bosses struggle with the most? CareerBuilder outlines the most commonly reported trouble spots for managers:

- Dealing with issues between co-workers — 25 percent
- Motivating team members — 22 percent
- Performance reviews — 15 percent
- Finding the resources needed to support the team — 15 percent
- Creating career paths for my team — 12 percent

Of course this blog provides great information that can help get new leaders comfortable with their new role.

What are you doing to prepare for the demands of 21st Century Leadership?

Habits of innovative, high-performance companies

Today's thinner revenue streams, narrower margins, heightened competition, and more limited resources have, if anything, increased the already high levels of stress among corporate survivors and raised the performance bar set by business executives. That has prompted changes in the ways companies invest, manage, and innovate—changes designed to minimize risk.

In a survey involving more than 280 product executives in 17 different industries, common patterns emerged among the study's top performers. Among the good management habits of innovative, high-performance companies:

Great Leaders get a Second in Command

Every business leader, executive, indeed, every manager needs a right-hand. A back-up. A second-in-command. There are lots of reasons for that:

- Someone in charge when you travel or are out for whatever reason
- Someone who complements your strengths and fills in weaknesses
- Doubles effectiveness for certain tasks / responsibilities
- It’s always good to have a strong “bench”
- Reduces stress on the organization and improves its effectiveness
- Succession planning

A second-in-command can be the most important person in your organization. The rub is they’re very hard to find. They’re even harder to find when you’re not looking. It’s actually shocking how many key managers, executives, and business leaders don't get how important it is to have a back-up.

Having a second-in-command improves the effectiveness of every organization and is well worth the cost. Every key manager or leader should have one. As for finding that unique individual, it’s just like a specialized executive search. Here are five tips useful in finding your second in command:

21st Century Innovation Brings Speed to Knowledge

When we think about innovation, we typically think about the result, not the process, as if the idea sprang out of the ground fully formed. Innovation is not getting something to market; it's getting the right product or service to market. This requires a commitment to the consumer, not solely to your company's internal capabilities. It is speed to knowledge of what your customers want that matters, not just speed to deployment. True innovation takes a bit of planning.

We're all familiar with famous innovators such as Steve Jobs and Howard Schultz, but the truth is we're all innovators. It's behavior more than it is a gift. Fundamentally, it's about problem solving, understanding how to ask the right questions, and seeing patterns before facts.

There are four principles necessary to hold to in order to preserve what's essential about a brand without closing minds to the innovative opportunities a new product presents.

Leadership 101: Managing Up

Learning to manage up is required if you want to succeed in corporate America. It’s as important as getting the job done. Managing up gives your leaders a way to see the work you do in a way that will benefit you. It also creates job security. Here are five ways to manage up that will put you in line for raises, security, and a fulfilling career.

Re-thinking Innovation, 4 Innovation Myths

There’s a temptation to see innovation as the fun side of business, the nice bits where you get to use your creativity (instead of all that execution stuff). Innovation though has to be rethought as a discipline that’s distinct from cheer leading or brainstorming or crowd sourcing. So what are the top 4 assumptions we need to get rid of?

Can your perfect Mentor find you??

The advice has become almost a cliche: Find a mentor who can help you speed-learn the lessons needed to advance your career — a Yoda to instruct young Luke in the ways of the Jedi. This is bad advice. Yes, mentors can help dramatically. But you can’t find them — they need to find you.

Moving to the C-Suite Requires Development of these 3 Skills

A new generation of top execs has come into power over the last few years that don’t look much like their predecessors, at least in terms of skills. They aren’t necessarily the most technically brilliant at preparing a forecast, nor are they Zen masters of the supply chain.

Sure, those capabilities helped them rise up in the organization, but it’s not what got them to the C-suite, according to an article in the March issue of Harvard Business Review. What skills need to be in your toolbox to make it to the very top?

Soft ones.

“Technical skills are merely a starting point, the bare minimum,” write authors Boris Groysberg, L. Kevin Kelly, and Bryan MacDonald in The New Path to the C-Suite. “To thrive as a C-level executive, an individual needs to be a good communicator, a collaborator, and a strategic thinker — and we think the trend toward a general business orientation over a functional orientation will continue.”

Relying on interviews and examination of hundreds of executive profiles developed by the executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles, the authors lay out the new job requirements for seven positions: CIO, chief marketing and sales officer, CFO, general counsel, chief supply-chain-management officer, chief human resource officer, and CEO.

For example, here are the new requirements to take the chief information officer position in your firm.

- Ability to view the business holistically, across functional, unit, and regional boundaries

- Process orientation and comfort with organizational design

- Information analytic knowledge; ability to help companies sort through and use information

- Expertise in investment allocation and using ROI to make decisions about future IT expenditures

Are these three skills in demand and recognized as critical to reach the top in your organization? What are other skills that you see as important?

Instilling Innovation in Leadership

As we start a new year during a slow recovery, innovation will be at a premium as organizations strive to uncover new opportunities for growth. Yet many leaders have trouble thinking about (let alone driving) innovation when they're focused on managing through the still-challenging present.

Five years ago, GE (GE) launched a leadership development program called "Leadership, Innovation and Growth" (LIG) to stimulate growth and innovation from within the organization. The program created new ways to think and talk about innovation simply and practically, so it would grow into part of how leaders operated their business. Leadership teams from across GE's top 60 businesses have since participated in the program, and have learned how to translate innovative ideas and opportunities into initiatives with real results.

As GE prepares to launch the next iteration of LIG (focused on global growth), they have spent some time reflecting on what's worked and what needs improvement. The factors most responsible for LIG's success have value and relevance far beyond GE, especially in a slow-growth world. Organizations can teach innovation to their leaders and teams—so these employees can make what they learn in the classroom part of how they operate day to day. Here's the execution road map.

Innovation Always Trumps Invention

Invention is often viewed as a source of economic growth. It isn't. It's innovation that generates new products, new services, new businesses, and new jobs. As a country we need to be focused on innovation more than ever before.

Invention and innovation have been mashed together so thoroughly that it is hard to tell the difference between them—yet they could not be more different.

The implications of this confusion are important, steering budding entrepreneurs down the wrong path, crimping the growth of existing companies, and muddying public policy intended to support business.

It is time to clarify and redefine the difference between invention and innovation.