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Tom Fleming, the CEO of Dealogic speaks about building a successful organization through innovation.
The fundamental challenge for every company, and therefore for every senior executive, is to drive profitable growth through innovation. Innovation produces growth in revenue and profits but also increases the productivity and happiness of staff by providing challenging work in an atmosphere of collaboration with high-quality colleagues, upward mobility, and the prospect of higher earnings. Simply put, it is innovation that over the long term drives the success or failure of an enterprise and its people.
Executives capable of driving innovation are the ones shareholders value most and who tend to move up the ranks of an organization fastest and retain their senior level posts the longest. The process of successful innovation is challenging because it requires an executive to execute across the core business disciplines of management, technology, production, finance and marketing. The ability to manage a constant process of innovation is a critical capability of a high performer because it forces the executive to define the strategy for the enterprise, to develop action plans and then get the organization actively engaged working on forward looking opportunities.
Driving successful innovation in a company that already has established products and an established client base is one of a senior managers greatest challenges. Within the organization it requires harmonizing the efforts of numerous individuals from different parts of an organization and in certain cases gaining acceptance from staff who are being tasked with cannibalizing an existing successful offering which can appear disruptive to their existing job and to the company’s clients.
External to the organization it requires the ability to tightly manage the process of establishing a precise understanding of what the target customer needs the product to do. And finally it requires delivering the solution to the market in a manner that achieves the revenue and profit potential which provides the economic and psychic rewards that propel the enterprise forward.
