Innovation Strategists: 3 Ways to Drive Innovation at Your Organization

One of the biggest threats to companies across industries is disruption, and thus, innovation becomes the crucial factor that determines whether an organization can survive and thrive. As a journalism student at Northwestern University with an interest in business design, I have found these two pieces of content that offer great insights for innovation strategists.

The first piece is an article titled “How to Set the Conditions for Innovation,” published on IDEO’s blog and co-written by IDEO designers Sean Tang, David Aycan and Kateryna Romanova. This article shares five ways for organization leaders to develop the work environments most conducive to their teams’ creativity. These recommendations are proven by empirical evidence from IDEO’s Creative Difference (C∆) platform. According to results from over 100 companies, IDEO confirms that creative and innovative teams “tend to outperform teams that stick to the status quo.”

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The second piece is a TEDx talk by the legendary evangelist Guy Kawasaki, titled “The Art of Innovation.” Inspired by his remarkable careers, Kawasaki succinctly explains what innovation is and how to be innovative in 11 maxims. His advice are very practical and cover different aspects of innovation. He also offers specific examples to support his arguments.

Based on my learning from Northwestern and my reflection on these two pieces, I have developed 3 recommendations for innovation strategists looking to drive innovation at their organizations:

• Define Your Purpose – An innovative company should clearly define its purpose and communicate it to everyone on the team.

• Actively Encourage Experiments – To propel innovation, a company should encourage its employees to experiment and create an environment that celebrates not only success, but also failure.

• Share Your Learnings – To innovate effectively, a company should establish a system that allows people to learn from each other, which will significantly reduce repeated efforts.

An effective innovation strategy is no longer a nice-to-have, but can make or break an organization. I hope these resources are helpful to you, and I’d really appreciate it if you could share your thoughts in the comments section below!

Hi there! My name is Cathy He, and I’m a senior at Northwestern University studying Journalism, Comparative Literature, Marketing and Design. My career goal is to work at the intersection of business, design and innovation. In my free time, I enjoy reading, boxing, cooking and baking. I am also a connoisseur of tea!

Brand Managers: 3 Action Items to Forge Great Ties Between your Brand and Consumers

Brand managers are constantly seeking ways to connect with their consumers to ultimately enhance their brand performance, which leads to better sales results. As a graduate student at Northwestern in Medill studying IMC, I hold great interest in studying branding. While browsing through articles of related topics, these two articles have stand out of all that they explicitly address ways to elevate your branding strategy to the next level.

The article by Dionne Mahaffey, chief executive of the CPAI Group, Inc., talks about ways to connect with target consumers in her article Five Strategic Steps to Improve Your Branding Strategy. She believes that brand managers should invest in forging the strong connection between the company and the customer’s emotions and memories, by asking why consumers purchase the brands they purchase, and giving them what they want before they realize it. It is crucial to reflect on company’s business objective and think about how it can align with customers’ expectation. The insights can be used to forge emotional connection with the customer group.(Forbes)

Rayana Pandey speaks about connecting to consumers by delivering the right content in the article, Wall Street Journal’s New Content Strategy and What Brands Can Learn From It. She specifically comments on Wall Street Journal’s strategy of incorporating video, visuals and interactivity to grab more attention from audiences who are getting busier each day. She argues for the importance of metrics of keeping everything on track, but put more emphasis on delivering the right context with correctness and objectivity to the readers. The approach will shape the brand as a trustworthy brand to consumers. In addition, Innovation is an ultimate key attribute to grab public attention and create a stronger tie. (Marketing)

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Based on my reviews and relevant study I’m doing at Northwestern, I highly recommend several action items that you should try out:

·      Connect to emotion - Form brand strategy to arouse certain emotion and relate to consumers past experience in order to create a strong relationship

·      Nickname your consumers - name your consumer segments to have them feel like being in a community surrounded by people like them

·      Surprise your audience - Create Innovative content draw attention

That is said, put consumers’ need in front of everything, stand in their shoes to think and stay visually interesting with innovative videos and image. Your consumers will be drawn to your brand ultimately.

Previously worked in The Mill in the field of marketing and advertising, I am now a fulltime graduate student in Northwestern IMC program, specialized in branding. I will be graduating this December. With profound intercultural understanding, I am greatly knowledgeable in global brands. Contact me on Twitter and Linkedin and hit me up with more marketing insights.