The great management writer W. Edwards Deming had a powerful introduction to his talks on quality management. Pulling out a dollar bill and waving it in front of the audience he would point out the wording: ‘In God we trust’ — and then go on to comment that in business life the same principle could be applied, but with the afterthought ‘…everything else we should measure’. His argument was simple; if we want to control something we need to make sure we measure it.
And that’s as true of innovation as any other business process. Although it can appear to be about inspiration, intuition and risk-taking the fact is that it’s a process and needs managing as such…..