Topics to Consider for Your Innovation Mission Statement
As you might guess there is no right or wrong answer here. If you’ve ever read Stephen Covey’s work on writing personal mission statements you’ll know what I’m talking about.
However, here are a few things that might be worth considering as you prepare to craft your Innovation Mission Statement: • What does innovation mean to me/us (don’t search for the textbook answer) • How do we innovate today and what’s good or bad about it • Where are there clear and present opportunities to be more innovative • What are some known new market, audience or business opportunities we are not exploiting • How innovative are your competitors and what makes you think so • Does my team or organization enable (or stifle) …show more content…
For example, perhaps doing something socially valuable or cause-related is really where you want to focus your innovation efforts. Or perhaps it’s about gaining new knowledge that will ultimately spur better creative problem solving. And, it certainly can be the case that your Innovation Mission Statement may encapsulate many of these dimensions, it’s up to you, allow yourself to think freely at first, you can edit and fine tune later.
One other point. If you’re an executive or team leader, you may want to have your team do this exercise individually and then convene to collectively compare notes, consolidate and prioritize to land on a single point of view or Team Innovation Mission Statement.
Preparing Your Innovation Mission Statement
Now you want to put some structure to your Statement. But here again there are no rights or wrongs. My only suggestion is to keep it simple and not too long. As I alluded to above, we’re aiming for actionability. With that in mind, here’s my personal Innovation Statement just to give you an idea of what this thing might look like. I would expect yours to look and feel very different.
My Personal Innovation Mission Statement
I will… • Be a passionate advocate for innovation • Be a lifelong student of