" Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way." - Booker T. Washington

"Centers of Excellence" are an increasingly common sight in organizations today.  They are being created and leveraged by organizations who are trying to improve performance and results to higher and higher levels.  There are Testing Centers of Excellence, Project Management Centers of Excellence, Customer Service Centers of Excellence, and even Innovation Centers of Excellence.  But what exactly IS a "Center of Excellence?"

If you try to find a definition of "Center of Excellence," you will be hard pressed to find common agreement or language.  Seriously, try Googling it.  The fact is, Centers of Excellence are most often unique to the organization or business unit that creates them.  However, here are some common elements of successful "Centers of Excellence":

• Collection of subject matter experts on a given subject/topic
• Central repository for research and study materials
• Clearinghouse of process, standards and policy design
• Source of educational opportunities on the given subject/topic
• Development and monitoring of success criteria for metrics/systems of measurement

Turning to Innovation Centers of Excellence, the concepts are very similar but, as you might suspect, with an innovation and creative problem solving focus.  Again, while specific definitions will vary from organization to organization, the Innovation Center of Excellence is commonly established to provide the following areas of thought leadership:

• Established group of subject matter experts in innovation and creative problem solving
• Development of training curriculum and delivery of educational opportunities to enhance innovation and creative problem solving techniques and systems including:
• Basic Creative Problem Solving Training
• Advanced Creative Problem Solving Training
• Idea Generation Training
  
• Leadership Training
• Facilitation Training
• Innovation System Management Training
• Establishment and documentation of innovation and idea management processes, policies and systems
• Problem Definition
  
• Idea Campaigns and Suggestion Systems
• Idea Capture
• Idea Filtering and Selection
• Idea Quality Control
• Idea Prototyping and Piloting
• Idea Implementation
  
• Organize and encourage collaboration, engagement, open dialog, group creativity (brainstorming) sessions and other opportunities for idea/concept sharing
• Facilitation of internal and external customer analysis, customer observation, open innovation idea gathering, future farming, trend analysis and other research activities
  
• Development of standard requirements, success criteria, systems of measurement, metrics and other methods of improvement and maturity
• Promotion, monitoring and periodic measurement of attributes that support an innovation/creative organizational culture
• Trust/idea sharing
• Risk taking vs. risk avoidance analysis
• Measurement of executive commitment
• Establishment of dedicated "idea time" for employees
• Segregated idea/prototype/piloting funding
• Management and oversight of innovation/idea funding sources, budgets and project portfolios
• Development of innovation-based reward and recognition systems
• Establishment and maintenance of dedicated collaboration/idea generation facilities
• Establishment of network of liaisons with Continuous Improvement/Six Sigma Team, New Product/Business Development Team, Executive Management Strategy Team, Technology Management Team, Marketing Team, etc.

As you can see, the Innovation Center of Excellence has a lot of responsibilities and serves as the critical hub of innovative and creative activity for the organization.  This hub and spoke networking system ensures alignment of the innovation strategy across the entire organization.  It also ensures that the time, attention and focus of the organization's thought leaders and passionate innovators is on the delivery of that innovation strategy.  The Innovation Center of Excellence is a major goal in your Innovation Maturity plan...so start one today!!!

Have a GREAT week!!!