"To induce employees to explore new ideas, you have to tolerate early failure and reward long-term success...the challenge is to craft incentives that will make creative people comfortable with thinking big and taking risks" - Gustave Manso

Well, its that time of year again...the time of year where everyone takes a look back to see how their past goals fared over the last twelve months, and to look ahead to setting meaningful goals for the upcoming year.  As you starting thinking about what you want to focus on for next year, my challenge for the readers of this blog is to incorporate innovation and personal creativity targets within both your personal and professional goals for 2007.  Stretch your comfort zone this year.  Make your own future.  Think BIG!!!

To give you some help in your goal-setting endeavors, here are some examples for both corporate leaders and individuals:

Goals for Corporate Leaders:

• Create a culture that fosters creativity
• Grant freedom to employees to take risks
• Remove barriers to communication across the company
• Reward fast failure
• Reward idea generators
• Give employees time to think or work on new ideas
• Build innovation into your financial goals
• Develop a system for measuring innovation-related metrics
• Set up a fund to finance promising new ideas

Goals for improving personal creativity:

• Challenge the status quo
• Be curious
• Imagine
• Become more self-motivated
• Find your passion
• Take risks
• Pay attention to detail
• Do not fear failure
• Dream
• Wish
• Be confident
• Go looking for new ideas
• Feed your subconscious with fresh, new observations

Here's hoping your 2006 was a successful year, and that 2007 will produce breakthrough results through your attention to innovative and creative thinking.

Happy Holidays!!!