Recreate yourself at will

By ANGELA McCARTHY

Innovation is one of those buzz words - something that's supposedly vital for careers and businesses alike.

So vital, a 2001 business practices survey discovered innovative New Zealand businesses were more likely to increase market share, profitability and sales than their more traditional counterparts. It found 28 per cent of innovators exported, compared with only 16 per cent of non-innovators.

The world of business is now in a permanent state of flux so constant innovation is the only strategy for survival, says Robyn Bailey, Auckland University of Technology Careers Centre careers counsellor, who is developing workshops on innovation as a career competency with fellow AUT counsellor Nancy Dunlop.

"This means workers also need to be adaptable, innovative and creative. The world is in flux, and so, therefore, is the worker."

But how do individuals develop the skills to cope with change and become innovative?

Philippa Reed did it by looking outside the square. Reed, who has a doctorate in Germanic languages and literature, changed focus after a stay in the United States.

Wanting a change of career, she read What Colour is Your Parachute by Richard Bolles and basically set up her own career innovation programme.

During the process she undertook a three-month contract with Auckland Chamber of Commerce, then moved into corporate tax consulting with KMPG, where she worked for the next 12 years in a variety of roles, from tax consultancy to change management.

She then combined her academic and business background in a four-year stint as University of Auckland Business School executive director of executive programmes before becoming executive adviser at the Equal Employment Opportunities Trust.

Another innovation was to take up painting. She believes this has helped her tap into creativity and energy - important facets of innovation. And it has led to further learning - she is studying towards a master's degree in fine arts through the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.

Identifying transferable skills was an important component in realising it was possible to move from humanities to commerce, says Reed. Answering tax questions is as much about putting information in context as it is about understanding tax legislation, and reading literature or history involves the same process of looking beneath the surface for the story.

Reed is now involved in work-life balance projects at the EEO Trust, another theme requiring innovation as people adapt to changes in their lives and the workplace.

To be innovative in your career you've got to get out of your hole and see the opportunities, says Bailey, who uses British careers expert Gareth Dent's garage metaphor to help clients understand the innovative career concept.

A garage is full of stuff with potential to be many things. "Your garage stuff could become a garden bench or a go-kart," she says. "From a career perspective your 'stuff' is your interests, values, experiences, skills, which can lead to multiple occupational choices, restricted only by your creative limitations."

Bailey and Dunlop describe innovation as the ability to make changes and improvements to the way things are done, to come up with new ideas or find new uses for old ideas - whether they are your career, a product or a service.

It is about adding value, says Business New Zealand executive director Anne Knowles, and is highly desired in employees.

"In a service context it means being on the front foot. In other areas it may mean seeing a new improved way to do something."

Employers need to encourage and foster employees' initiative and innovation, she adds. "Change is always with us, so it is how it is dealt with, managed and met that makes a successful business."

And Murray Webb, managing director of The Sales Profiling Company, points out that, "at an individual level, innovativeness seems likely to be rewarded with better remuneration, promotional prospects and job security".

Innovation is slowly gaining currency as academic subjects. Unitec, Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology, University of Auckland and Waikato University offer courses on entrepreneurship and innovation.

The approach at Unitec's New Zealand Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (NZCIE) is, in a word, innovative. Dr Peter Mellalieu, professor of business creativity and strategy, says business innovation is about not just having a good idea but making the idea work.

His believes people learn from their own mistakes and the mistakes of others so learners at masters, bachelors and certificate level have to develop confidence about exposing things that could have gone better.

"We provide situations where this can happen," he says. "We reward excellence and outrageous failure, but not mediocrity."

There is a continuum from creativity to innovation to entrepreneurship to high-growth entrepreneurship (the Brierleys and Bransons of this world), says Mellalieu.

He describes the ideal state of entrepreneurship as involving six attributes, or FACETS - most entrepreneurs only have two or three.

They are being focused, figuring out the advantage in an idea, being creative, having the ego to want success, having ability to build a team that includes all these facets and looking at the social as well as commercial advantages.

But what if you don't think you've an innovative bone in your body - a worry if it is an essential career competency?

"[Edward] de Bono believed innovation and creativity can be learned and developed in everyone," says Bailey who suggests De Bono's six thinking hats method (see http://cispom.boisestate.edu/murli/cps/sixhats.html) as well as brainstorming, mind mapping, problem reversal, random input, lateral thinking as just some ways innovation can be kickstarted.

Webb suggests creativity techniques such as setting yourself a quota of new ideas to achieve - two a day for the next five days - or breaking some daily routines.

"Listen to a different radio station on the way to work, eat only Bulgarian food for a week, or simply put any creative ideas into a notebook."

In other words, he says, if you start doing things naturally innovative people do, you will be on the road to developing innovativeness as a competency.

Sound too difficult? Old dogs can't learn new tricks? Absolutely not, says TMP/Hudson's Global Resources principal consultant, HR Consulting, Matt Dale.

For 15 years the company has been running career management programmes helping people become innovative with career changes.

"The hard part is coming out of a command and control environment where as a worker you never had to show initiative. People need to relearn that they have control and don't need to wait for something to happen. Then you give yourself a chance to be innovative."

In business, the key to innovation is leadership, says Dale.

"Innovation can't be trained, but it can be encouraged through a culture of empowerment. Leadership that is empowering, not directive, enables individuals to be creative."

An important factor with innovation is time, says Webb. An August 2002 Harvard Business Review found that extreme time pressure kills creativity.

"Perhaps this is why at 3M, all of the company's approximately 70,000 employees are subject to the 15 per cent rule," says Webb. "They are encouraged to spend 15 per cent of their work week, unsupervised, dreaming up product innovations."

So come on, get dreaming.