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Home > Marketing & Innovation > Content > Articles

Reaping Rapid Successes

Published in LaZOOZ - Strategy, Marketing and Innovation Newsletter, Issue 68, June, 2011
By Ari Manor, CEO, ZOOZ

Let us assume that you have conducted a systematic innovation process at your organization. First, you learned several thinking tools and used them to develop an idea bank with dozens of ideas for interesting innovations for your line of products or services. You then formulated screening criteria (applicability, profitability, etc.), and used them to rank the different ideas that you came up with. And now you are ready and willing to promote the top ideas.

So far, everything sounds great. However, if the innovation process is new at your organization, be sure that cynical managers and employees are scrutinizing your every move, waiting for you to fail. Firstly, because there are cynics everywhere. Secondly, because a new process constitutes a change and change is something that undermines the status quo and arouses resistance. And thirdly, innovation requires effort, and not everyone likes to exert themselves.

So what do you do? Instead of promoting the top ideas, especially if they are difficult to implement - you are better off promoting two-three ideas that you can execute quickly and easily (even if they are a little less exciting or significant). After you reap several small and rapid successes with these ideas, the message will sink in clearly throughout the organization: innovation works, and it's here to stay. The cynics will keep a low profile, and the politicians will realize where the future lies and embrace innovation.

Then, only after you have a few small successes under your belt, you should promote your truly big ideas.

Nevertheless, if you are eager to get working on the big ideas right away - it's important that you promote them in a "safe zone", removed from the rest of the organization, as we described in a previous column.

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The article was written by Ari Manor, CEO of ZOOZ Marketing & Organizational Consulting. ZOOZ conducts training for managers and employees. Send your comments to ari@zooz.co.il.