On the Fast Company list of the world’s 50 most innovative companies of 2011, Apple ranks number 1. Then comes Twitter and Facebook, followed by Nissan, Groupon and Google. In that order. No surprises. They have all enabled an ecosystem of creativity that have redefined communication, transportation and retail. How? What is the secret?

How can entrepreneurs make it happen? More important: How can companies swim in uncertain waters of innovation and grow? Enric Bayó, from ACC1Ó, gave some hints about it in his presentation at BIZBarcelona. He underlined five key concepts: commited and strong leadership, balanced innovation model, identification of opportunities, risk and Open Innovation. He also distinguished investigation from innovation. “Ideas do not have any value until they turn into a reality”. There is a summary of his talk in L’Anella.

To go a little bit further on, above strategic clarity to create these new opportunities and avoid mediocrity and commoditization, entrepreneurs need patience. Creativity is a fickle thing an having an “innovation mindset” that enters every aspect of the business is not achieved with shortcuts. Managers need to constantly look at their part of the business and ask themselves “what are the barriers to being innovative and creative?”

Some questions might help: Is anybody asked about their ideas? Do staff know about the need for ideas and innovation? Are people rewarded for their ideas and contributions? Experienced innovators say that “organisations that truly invest in their people and understand the value of their ideas ensure that facilities, equipment, time and resources are organised to help foster ideas and innovations”.

Thinking outside the box is not thinking out side the box (image from blindsociety.com)

Albert Szent Gyorgi, who is credited with discovering Vitamin C, stated: “Discovery is seeing what everybody else has seen, and thinking what nobody else has thought.” Easy said. Innovative thinkers are supposed to challenge dominant ideas to conceive new possibilities. In other words, to think outside the box. But how? What do we need to get into an innovation-mindset?

Jim Carroll has some interesting ideas about it. He proposes, for example, to hire people you don’t like, because “the reason you don’t like them is because they are different, and that is probably the exact reason why their ideas are important”. He also underlines that knowledge is momentary. That  means you have to be able to forget and relearn, quickly. He eventually recommends to focus firmly on the future and make things happen, which by the way means taking risks. “We’ve become too focused on managing instead of growing”, underlines the expert.

What do you think about it? Hit Barcelona has built a programme to give you the opportunity to share your point of view with other entrepreneurs and help companies with the best ideas and brightest future to meet investors willing to back them, so that they can turn their out of the box thinking into a solid business.

“The companies that will win in the future will be the ones that are really focused on human beings”

Highlights

• Management is one of most important technologies human has invented, and we need to reinvent that technology.Management was really invented to solve the problem on how to turn human beings to robots.Somehow we are satisfied with the same management system of middle 1900.

Gary Hamel’s interview from Hit Barcelona on Vimeo.

Why has management evolution stopped?

• Maybe we have solved all the possible problems or maybe we have simply been caught in a paradigm trap, which i think is the correct answer.

The 3 new challenges that face organitzations today are:

First challenge: Change

• Are companies changing as fast as the world is?
• A lot of companies have been left behind on the change curve.
• Product advantages don’t last as long as they used to.
• The dividing line between a leader and a competitor is usually months only.
• Change only happens in crisis.
• Today the challenge is building an evolutionary advantage over time.

Second challenge: Protection barriers

• The protection barriers companies used to have are falling.
• We have to be adaptable in a new environment.
• Innovation is the only protective barrier. There are ways to determine innovation is not a key point in a company.

Third challenge:  Knowledge is becoming a commodity

• We need to integrate knowledge in a creative way.
• We need a completely different way of thinking about our people.

Other highlights

• Worker values pyramid: Obedience, diligence, expertise, initiative, creativity, passion.
• The job of managers is not to get employees to serve the organization, but to build the environment to encourage people to collaborate and contribute.
• “All commitment is voluntary”.
• “If you never tell a colleague what to do it will never work with you again”.
• We have to destroy the notion of the CEO.
• How do you became a management innovator? You have to be willing to challenge conventional thinking.
• You have to go to the social revolution on the web to see the future of management.
• The assumption is that when you get people more freedom they get less disciplined.
• Involvement drives commitment.
• The single reason companies get into trouble is when they concentrate responsibility in few people so the organization depends on personal characteristics of that people.

If you had grown up in the internet world:

• Every idea should compete in equal condition.
• What matters is your contribution not your credentials.

Management is only on doing to simple things

• Amplifying human capabilities (the internet has done it)
• Aggregate those capabilities (we see that through open source)

The irony is we as individual are already adaptable, innovative and interested but our organizations are not as much.