"Continuous effort, not strength or intelligence, is the key to unlocking our potential" - Winston Churchill

Care to take a guess at the number one most searched term people use on Google, Yahoo or other search engines that causes them to eventually land on my website?  Yep..."continuous innovation."  It seems that there are an awful lot of people who understand what innovation does, the endless growth potential it can provide and the organizational benefits an innovation culture can create.  Unfortunately, just as many people struggle with making innovation a constant, seamless and "continuous" effort within their organizations. 

To help people understand the concept of doing something in a continuous way, I developed this Continuous Innovation Model:

                                           
Once I put the concept of "continuous" in a circular reference model, it clicked for many clients.

Like anything that is both successful and repeatable, somewhere behind the curtains must be a well-managed process.  However, rather than a "follow the steps" or "check the box" kind of process, the continuous innovation process is a collection of "next practices" or tools that should be viewed as part of a larger toolbox.  There are literally thousands of available models, processes, tools, techniques, best practices, lessons learned, practice guides, etc to help you on your continuous innovation journey.  Finding the right mix of these "tools" is what makes continous innovation possible.

The model listed here shows my preferred flow of activity when assessing, diagnosing and developing innovation management systems.  For those of you in the project management or IT fields, you've heard the phrase, "Success is a combination of people, process & technology."  The model represents exactly that.  Individually, a small benefit can be realized, but the entire system will eventually breakdown without all of the pieces and parts working in harmony.  And that's where the "art" of innovation management meets the "science."

I know that times are tough right now.  Organizations are struggling to stay alive.  Worrying about tomorrow seems to be only a luxury at this point.  And yet, this rough economic patch will end.  They all do.  But our world is going to look a lot different...and that's probably a good thing.  Organizations that come out of the recession need to be ready to hit the ground running.  They need to be ready with new products, services, customer experiences, business models, etc.  One way to do that is to keep your innovation/idea/R&D systems alive.  Keep them funded.  Keep them staffed with your best and brightest.  Charge them with looking to the future and visioning what the new economy and the new consumer is going to need/want/demand.

Use this Continuous Innovation Model to help you establish a constantly productive system of moving ideas to reality.  Remember, if you need some help...that is why we are here!  In fact, that's our organizational mission "...to assist business clients with the development of successful and constantly maturing innovation management processes and systems."

Blog postings might get a little infrequent around the upcoming holiday, so I want to take a moment to wish everyone a Very Merry Christmas, a Very Happy Holiday and a Very Successful New Year.  Think For A Change, LLC. is grateful for having the opportunity to work with such fantastic clients, discuss/debate all things innovation here on this blog, share thoughts, ideas and best practices among my fellow colleagues on their blog/web sites, and collaborate together as a larger community via LinkedIn, Twitter and the PDMA International Conference this past year.