Why a Networking Culture Is Important

by Stefan Lindegaard

The reason for creating a networking culture is obvious once you look at the current and future direction of innovation. Let's start by disposing of the myth of the lone genius (the Thomas Edisons and the Alexander Graham Bells of yesteryear) arriving at a breakthrough innovation on his/her own.

This model wasn't true then, and even if it were, it simply does not hold true in today's complex business organizations. Technology and the challenges that must be solved have become so complex that many, perhaps even most, companies can no longer rely solely on their own internal innovation geniuses, no matter how brilliant those people may be.

Innovation is increasingly about having groups of people come together to leverage their diverse talents and expertise to solve multi-faceted challenges that cross multiple disciplines. To make this happen within your organization, and beyond as you move toward open innovation, requires a networking culture that is designed, supported, and modeled by your company's leaders.

Even organizations that are not ready to fully embrace open innovation are finding that employees' mindsets about networking must be stretched as more companies deploy internal R & D functions outside the corporate headquarters and around the world.

Employees start to wonder who should do innovation and where it should take place. Although this is positive, success in such situations depends heavily on the ability of the employees to initiate, solidify, and leverage external relationships.

Another key motivation for setting up networking initiatives is based on the simple fact that the knowledge of any company is inside the heads of the employees. Discovering and distributing this knowledge has always been a challenge, and now, more than ever, the ability to leverage a company's collective knowledge and experience through virtual and face-to-face networks and communities is critical to innovation.

Furthermore, establishing the ability to bring knowledge and potential new innovation insights in from external sources demands a strong networking culture supported and modeled from the top.

In one of my next posts, I will give some advice on how to create a networking culture.

Related Article:

• Tapping the Network to Facilitate Innovation

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Stefan Lindegaard is a speaker, network facilitator and strategic advisor who focus on the topics of open innovation, intrapreneurship and how to identify and develop the people who drive innovation.

Innovation Perspectives - Trendspotters' Fab Five

This is the second of several 'Innovation Perspectives' articles we will publish this week from multiple authors to get different perspectives on 'Who should be responsible (if anyone) for trend-spotting and putting emerging behaviors and needs into context for a business?'. Here is the next perspective in the series:

by Mike Brown

Who should be deciphering the future and helping shape how a business understands and prepares for it?

The first inclination might be to think about a specific part of an organization for the function. It's important though to identify the individuals well-suited to this challenging role. From that perspective, five capabilities are vital to successfully champion this effort:

1. Having a Natural External Perspective


• Creating solid insights about the future depends on starting with a view outside, not inside the business. It's a natural orientation that not all people share. Someone in a trend-interpreting role has to be a sponge for gathering, processing, and extrapolating information on markets, customers, competitors, and a broad set of inputs on the economy, demographics, and other environmental factors.


2. Being an Integrator


• Being able to do something with a broad set of future-looking inputs requires someone with a solid perspective on the business and what drives its success. This has to be coupled with the ability to understand how other industries and markets affect the business today and imagine how they might in the future. Finally, it demands a strong command of frameworks to integrate meaningful interpretation of broad, and typically incomplete, forward-oriented data sets.


3. Possessing Both Left and Right-brained Orientations


• Ideally solid quantitative metrics (i.e., demographics, demand forecasting, industry sizing trends) are available to help form relevant predictions. Often though, numeric information isn't available. In any case, analysis has to be coupled with creating compelling stories to drive strategic actions anticipating and preparing for the future. "Whole brain thinkers" are essential, since they provide left-brain quantitative and analytical skills coupled with creative, communications-oriented right-brain perspectives to help make on-target, forward-looking action happen.


4. Displaying Strong Intuition


• There's no single clear picture of what the future holds. Creating credible future scenarios requires tremendous amounts of interpretation and extrapolation. Some of this can be learned; much of it can't. Trend watchers and prognosticators need to be able to instinctively "know" what all the information they're seeing means. If it's a broad intuitive sense, that's fantastic. Even if it's industry-specific, that can be fine too. I used to work with an economist who had been in transportation for many years and had tremendous instincts for our market. I'm not sure he could have been dropped into another industry and had the same feel, but for our market, he could look at a competitor's quarterly numbers and tell you exactly what was and would be happening in its logistics operation with high certainty.


5. Building Powerful Relationships and Networks


• It's quite a list to this point, isn't it? It's challenging for one person to excel at all of these skills. As a result, the fifth essential capability is to be an outstanding relationship builder. This includes the ability to recognize the talents necessary in others who can help shape a view of the future along with the interpersonal skills to cultivate and share value throughout the network of experts that's needed.

There are certainly other skills and capabilities which make for a strong trend watcher and interpreter. But if you can find someone in your business solidly embodying these skills, don't wait for a clearer view of the future. Get them into the job right now!


You can check out all of the 'Innovation Perspectives' articles from the different contributing authors on 'Who should be responsible (if anyone) for trend-spotting and putting emerging behaviors and needs into context for a business?' by clicking the link in this sentence.

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Mike Brown is an award-winning innovator in strategy, communications, and experience marketing. He authors the Brainzooming TM blog, and serves as the company's chief Catalyst. He wrote the ebook "Taking the NO Out of InNOvation" and is a frequent keynote presenter.

10 Simple Ways to Stay Connected

by Matt Heinz

No matter what you do for a living, an active network is critical to your current and future success. That said, it's very easy to ignore the often simple, tactical things you can do to keep your network engaged and growing.

Here's a list of ten things to consider doing daily. If ten is too much to start (although this list should take all of 15-20 minutes if you stay focused), start with just 2-4 and expand from there. Each piece incrementally will help, and you'll be surprised how quickly your investment comes back in the way of opportunities, introductions and more.

1. Email three people you haven't spoken with in some time, just to catch up
   
2. Scan your LinkedIn home page for profile updates, and comment back on 2-3 that are particularly interesting to you
   
3. Use Gist.com to see what your contacts have done, read or published recently
   
4. Send one hand-written thank you or congratulations note to someone
   
5. Return one phone call or email from a sales rep. Make it short, but return the connection. You'd be surprised how often these turn into something more valuable than the pitch.
   
6. Give someone an unsolicited recommendation in LinkedIn
   
7. Scan your blog RSS feed, and forward 1-3 articles to people you think will find them interesting or valuable
   
8. Invite someone to lunch today. You have to eat anyway. If they say no, they're happy you asked. If they say yes, you get a valuable chance to reconnect.
   
9. Thank someone for the hard work they did yesterday, and copy their manager if sent via email
   
10. Send an unsolicited email to someone you've always wanted to meet, asking for a quick phone call or coffee. Do this daily, and I guarantee your response rate will be better than zero.

What would you add to this list?


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Matt Heinz is principal at Heinz Marketing, a sales & marketing consulting firm helping businesses increase customers and revenue. Contact Matt at matt@heinzmarketing.com or visit www.heinzmarketing.com.