If you have ideas, you have the main asset you need, and there isn’t any limit to what you can do with your business and your life.”
— Harvey Firestone

Innovation is one buzzword of the economic recession…. everyone is talking about it and trying to figure out how to institutionalize innovation.  However, innovation has long been a key component of our economy and to an organization’s success.   Perhaps the pace of change and the call to adapt more quickly has created a sense of urgency around creating an innovative culture in organizations.  

For local government, innovation is crucial in serving citizens and preparing communities for the future.  Innovative local governments can anticipate new conditions and attempt to stay ahead of the curve of change.  Local governments are dealing with emerging challenges by finding new ways to enhance, develop or deliver services, and to making better use of resources.  

Spigit, a private company providing the most advanced platform available to create, engage and grow innovation, argues that what is different today is the development of tools and philosophies that engage employees more fully in the innovation process.  In their recently released white paper, Nine Keys to Innovation Management 2.0: How Organizations are Taking Advantage of Next Generation Innovation Principles to Lead Their Markets, Spigit states, “The ideas, knowledge, experience and judgment of the workforce are the most underutilized asset an organization has.”  
Spigit provides nine separate keys in their white paper to seize the opportunity of Innovation Management 2.0:

Treat innovation as a discipline.  Support from the Top, Align Organizational Processes around Innovation.

Common, dedication platforms increase innovation IQ and strengthen innovation culture.  How are you sharing, collecting, collaborating and moving ideas forward in your organization?
Innovation benefits from a diversity of perspectives.  Get outside of your normal network!

Prevent employee self-censorship of ideas.  Make it easy for your employees to socialize their ideas with others.
Create a culture of constant choices.  Be Adaptable, Change is inevitable which requires us to make choices daily.
Focus employees’ innovation priorities.  Focus, focus, focus.
Recognize innovation as a funnel with valuable leaks. Find the best ideas that will propel your organization forward but learn from all ideas.
If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.  There is value knowing what is working what isn’t.
Pursue a balanced portfolio of incremental and disruptive innovations.  Look for the short-term and long-term wins.

During the recent Alliance for Innovation Imagination Banks Webinar, Dr. James Svara, Director of the Center for Urban Innovation, School of Public Affairs at Arizona State University provoked attendees to think about some key questions that were adapted from the Employee Involvement Association including:
Do you effectively capture and utilize the skills and knowledge of your employees?
Are your employees encourages to give you their best ideas?
Do you know who your innovators are?
Do your employees feel that your organization values their ideas?
How much do your employees’ ideas save your organization each year?

Share on the ambassador Groups Wall how your organization is tapping the ideas of your organization’s greatest asset and turning the little (i’s) into the big (I’s)!

To read the Spigit White Paper Visit: www.spigit.com/documents/whitepaper.html