How can innovation be taught?

Garth Saloner, Philip H Knight replies:

Innovation can be taught , and we have learnt how to do that innovation requires 3 elements:
1. You have to recognize the problem and that needs analytically thinking , B Schools have been pretty good at that .
2. You have to come up with a solution, which is partly analytically and partly creative. I think business schools don't see themselves as teaching creativity . But we have developed process for creative and on how to teach creative thinking .
3. The third element is implementation  which is the biggest part of innovation, that is how you teach innovation, creativity and personal leadership.

Source: The Week, January 6 2013, p18

Never Loose Committed persons

A Panchatantra story -- Dog and Donkey – Never loose committed persons.

Story:

There was once a washer man who had a donkey and a dog. One night when the whole world was sleeping, a thief broke into the house, the washer man was fast asleep too but the donkey and the dog were awake. The dog decided not to bark since the master did not take good care of him and wanted to teach him a lesson.

The donkey got worried and said to the dog that if he doesn't bark, the donkey will have to do something himself. The dog did not change his mind and the donkey started braying loudly.

Hearing the donkey bray, the thief ran away, the master woke up and started beating the donkey for braying in the middle of the night for no reason.

Old moral “One must not engage in duties other than his own". The lesson: Mind your job.

Another thought to the same story which I came across while searching in the google:

The washer man was a well educated man from a premier management institute. He wanted to look at the bigger picture and think out of the box. He was convinced that there must be some reason for the donkey to bray in the night. He walked outside a little and did some fact finding, applied a bottom up approach, figured out from the ground realities that there was a thief who broke in and the donkey only wanted to alert him about it. Looking at the donkey's extra initiative and going beyond the call of the duty, he rewarded him with lot of hay and other perks and became his favorite pet.

The dog's life didn't change much, except that now the donkey was more motivated in doing the dog's duties as well. In the annual appraisal the dog managed "ME" (Met Expectations) .

Soon the dog realized that the donkey is taking care of his duties and he can enjoy his life sleeping and lazing around.

The donkey was rated as “star performer". The donkey had to live up to his already high performance standards.

Soon he was over burdened with work and always under pressure and now is looking for a NEW JOB...

My observations is as follows:

1.      The dog did not bark because he felt that he was not treated properly. He wanted to teach the master a lesson. Dissatisfaction breeds inefficiency.

2.      The donkey went an extra mile and was proactive. The donkey had the sense of ownership and wanted to protect his master and his other property. Going that extra mile shows responsibility or “the ability to respond”

3.      Reaction does not help but demoralizes (the master beating the donkey). Therefore the donkey decided not to interfere and started thinking “mind your job”. This reaction resulted in breeding self-centered and self fish attitude.

4.      Later with new provoking thoughts of different schools of management the master with professional knowledge learnt that reaction is not good and started to ponder on the cause and tried to understand the fundamental reasons of the donkey braying. This is thinking otherwise, or looking withdifferent lens, or different perspective, thanks to education.

5.      Praising the donkey and offering the incentive is motivating but …..Only to some extent.

6.      The result of excessive motivation is:

·         Performer becomes “star performer”;

·         He/she is pushed to work beyond his or her physical and emotional capacity – leading to distress.

·         The dog is made more lazy and and useless resource. While one person overworks the other person walks away with an income without commitment.

·         Work and you are given more work; you are given more and more work till you decide to leave the present master – like the donkey in the story.

The result the master looses committed employee (the donkey) and will be left with lazy people like the dogs.

The master should have sent the disloyal dog in the first instant and searched for a new dog.

Commitment and Loyalty cannot be equated to money value.

Leadership Nuggets

LucyP Marcus on the occasion of the 50^th anniversary of The Feminine Mystique writes about the Leadership Nuggets from Betty Freidman whose words are relevant even today and arouse violent emotions:

1. "There needs to be bolder thinking, on how to measure the quality of life of men and women in the work force. Currently, success is measured by material advancements. We need to readjust the definition of success to account for time outside of work and satisfaction of life, not just the dollars-and-cents bottom line."

2. “You can have it all, just not all at the same time.”

3. “A good woman is one who loves passionately, has guts, seriousness and passionate convictions, takes responsibility, and shapes society. ”

4. “The key to the trap is, of course, education. The feminine mystique has made higher education for women seem suspect, unnecessary and even dangerous. But I think that education, and only education, has saved, and can continue to save, American women from the greater dangers of the feminine mystique.”

5. “Aging is not 'lost youth' but a new stage of opportunity and strength.”

6. “It is easier to live through someone else than to complete yourself."

7. “It's a different stage of life, and if you are going to pretend its youth, you are going to miss it. You are going to miss the surprises, the possibilities, and the evolution that we are just beginning to know about because there are no role models and there are no guideposts and there are no signs.”

8. “In almost every professional field, in business and in the arts and sciences, women are still treated as second-class citizens. It would be a great service to tell girls who plan to work in society to expect this subtle, uncomfortable discrimination--tell them not to be quiet, and hope it will go away, but fight it. A girl should not expect special privileges because of her sex, but neither should she "adjust" to prejudice and discrimination”

9. “It is wrong to keep spelling out unnecessary choices that make women unconsciously resist either commitment or motherhood--and that hold back recognition of the needed social changes.”

10. “You can show more of the reality of yourself instead of hiding behind a mask for fear of revealing too much”

11. “The only way for a woman, as for a man, to find herself, to know herself as a person, is by creative work of her own.”

12. “Just as darkness is sometimes defined as the absence of light, so age is defined as the absence of youth.”

13. "The freedom to lead and plan your own life is frightening if you have never faced it before. It is frightening when a woman finally realizes that there is no answer to the question 'who am I' except the voice inside herself.”

14. “...bowling alleys and supermarkets have nursery facilities, while schools and colleges and scientific laboratories and government offices do not.”

15. “A woman has got to be able to say, and not feel guilty, 'Who am I, and what do I want out of life?' She mustn't feel selfish and neurotic if she wants goals of her own, outside of husband and children.”

Source:  
http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130219060733-60894986-10-leadership-nuggets-from-betty-friedan