Innovate your way through tough times

With all the health and economic turmoil, it’s natural to experience heightened concern and fear... Fear that can slow down our personal and collective recovery. Fear that can halt our creativity and productivity in its tracks.

Yes, it’s quite uncertain what lies ahead. Our habitual ways of living and doing business have been disturbed and unfrozen. Our habitual sources of entertainment, access to healthcare, ways of working, supply chain management… all put aside. That means the opportunity for innovative change is both ripe and necessary.

Now is not the time for business to sit on the innovation sidelines. Research from the 2008 Great Recession has been clear: companies that continued, even accelerated, their initiatives for innovation across multiple dimensions of business emerged with as much as 2x the stock market growth compared with average companies.

What’s needed are innovative initiatives that can (1) shift constrictive fear to constructive collaboration, (2) address the very real human needs for coping near-term, and (3) position all of us to emerge from this chaos stronger than ever. So the call today is not for just the standard approaches to innovation. The call is for a comprehensive, purposeful, inclusive, and values-driven approach to enabling innovation: what’s come to be known in many circles as Human Centered Innovation.

For those of you who have the energy and opportunity to keep innovating through tough times, I’ve prepared a short PPT that summarizes research that supports Human Centered Innovation as an approach suitable to present day challenges and future opportunities.  

Download this PPT and share with others!

Feel free to share it with whomever you wish. And may the Force be with you!

I’m sure you can add your own experience about the need to innovate through tough times. I’d appreciate learning from your insights. Connect with me on Linkedin and share your thoughts!