Personal Development as an Innovation Project

Many articles are written about what businesses need to do to stay competitive in these often turbulent times. Nurturing a corporate innovation culture often ranks at the top of the list. Companies feel they need to be aware of consumer trends, and promote themselves as having the flexibility to adapt quickly whilst the world changes dramatically about them. They are also reassessing the ways to work with employees, and are more willing than ever to use the advantages of global connectivity to further their own objectives. It is now possible to reach out and put together a global team of experts to respond to demands as they arise, instead of retaining and retraining a static workforce.

So how can individual employees adapt and change to stay relevant in this innovation culture? Research shows that most will now change jobs many times throughout their life. Instead of the traditional approach of starting at a job and retiring from the same company 50 years later, modern employees may hold as many as ten to fifteen jobs. There can be some degree of interpretation in that statement, as working multiple jobs during youth, and getting promoted or reassigned within the same company can also count as “changing jobs,” but suffice it to say employees have to keep their skills meaningful as well in order to stay on an interesting and fulfilling career path.

Employees want to work with companies that keep them engaged and properly compensated, but employers also want to have employees that are enthusiastic and innovative. Whether participating in the standard job mold, or becoming part of the “gig economy,” workers who want to remain relevant in the changing workforce need to keep a constant eye on their own personal growth and professional development. To accomplish this, some workers study the innovation projects companies implement, and turn them to their own benefit. They adapt the innovation approaches businesses use to create new products and services, with the hope of making themselves more employable now and in the future.

Creating a Personal Innovation Strategy

“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.”

~ Steve Jobs

When a business innovates so it can offer services to a new customer segment, it usually asks pointed questions and follows specific methodologies to determine the direction in which it needs to go. Individuals who seek to advance within their current environment, find better career opportunities, or build a more substantial client base can also treat the process as a personal innovation project wherein they reinvent themselves and transform their career path.

Those who want to experience growth in their careers and personal lives can take the methodologies and questions businesses use to innovate, and turn them into a personal questioning process. A business planning framework can be efficiently applied as a personal innovation strategy framework when planning the next career move as a form of personal reinvention. For example, a business entity pursuing a path of innovation follows a four-step process of Observe, Create, Prototype, and Implement. Individuals changing or updating their career could interpret the elements of the innovation framework by thinking about personal development in terms of customer service and following the same four-step process:

Step 1 - Observe

Look at your current or potential employers and clients to uncover their problems, which could represent solution opportunities for you. What roles might you take on that could address a pain point these organisations currently experience?

Step 2 - Create

Think about additional skills you might need to fill an identified niche role. Look at different ways of organising and presenting yourself in a CV or online profiles. Instead of the standard recitation of skills and positions, it might be better to showcase various problems you solved in current or previous positions.

Step 3 - Prototype

Show why you and your skills will be a much-needed and beneficial addition to any organisation. Don’t just think of yourself as an employee or consultant; demonstrate that you can become a solution or an advantage to those who are lucky enough to work with you.

Step 4 - Implement

Do more than just “talk the talk.” You have to be able to “walk the walk” as well. If you create a relevant and innovative role for yourself, while continuing the search for more ways to keep your “customers” satisfied, you will indeed make yourself irreplaceable.

Find a lack within those you want to associate with, and use that knowledge to create a job for yourself. The point of intersection between needs and your skills is where innovation begins.

Plotting a Path to Leadership and Personal Development

Following your passion might inspire others

“Finding opportunity is a matter of believing it’s there.”

~ Barbara Corcoran

When searching for strategic innovation, organisations may sometimes use a Business Model Canvas, or BMC, to look at themselves and what they have to offer. This strategic management tool helps easily define a business concept or idea. It is a one-page document which can also be used to help individuals work through fundamental elements to help structure an innovative idea in a coherent way. Elements you should look at when creating a personal innovation model canvas include:

• Value Propositions: What value can I offer?

• Customer Segments: Who can I help?

• Channels: How do I communicate my capabilities?

• Relationships: Can I build better relationships with existing work cohorts or create new ones?

• Revenue: What are the most effective ways I can make money?

• Resources: What resources do I have to help meet my goals?

• Key Partners: Who can help with my personal development?

• Key Activities: What actions do I need to take consistently?

• Cost: What level of personal, financial and emotional investment am I willing to make in my own growth?

Use this process to create a canvas of ideas for industries or companies where you want to create value, and develop value propositions for each segment.

A Brief Survey of Innovation Methodologies

“Without change there is no innovation, creativity, or incentive for improvement.

Those who initiate change will have a better opportunity to manage the change that is inevitable.”

~ William Pollard

Of course, there are other insightful innovation methodologies which can be adapted to the search for a personal innovation strategy. Frameworks that can be followed to achieve the “aha moment,” or turn on the light bulb of innovation to provide something new and different include. There’s an opportunity to apply this kind of thinking to yourself and what you have to offer the job market. What’s more, showing that you can be innovative in your approach to your own work will itself be appealing to potential clients or employers.

• Profit Innovation: How can you help an organisation increase the amount of revenue it produces?

• Network Innovation: How can you help improve the way connections are made?

• Structure Innovation: What ideas do you have that can improve internal structures?

• Process Innovation: Can you offer a better way to perform an existing job?

• Product Innovation: How can you adapt the ‘product’ you offer to bring more value to any employer?

• Support Innovation: What innovation can you offer to an organisation in terms of support? Perhaps your broader professional network can add value to your role.

• Service Innovation: Can you offer an employer more flexibility or availability?

• Channel Innovation: Can you deliver benefits to employers through different channels? If you can work for companies online or join a network, you could personally go global whilst still working from your home office.

• Brand Innovation: What is your brand and why would a company want to buy into it by employing you? Be clear about your values, dare to share your passions and, if you can, show how your social following can help you in your work.

• Engagement Innovation: The rise of virtual PAs shows how a totally different approach to engagement can be more valuable to clients and customers who themselves work in several locations and time zones.

Analysing these innovation opportunities to create a better way of conducting business can be the key to becoming a more effective employee or leader within an organisation, or a highly sought-after service provider. No specific framework is best for everyone. Choosing one requires an analysis of personal strengths and weaknesses, along with an understanding of the desired destination. Are you better at analytical observations or creative thinking, skilled at making assumptions and positing new theories, or better at finding ways to adapt in an unstable environment?

The answer may require that the framework shifts as the individual’s goals change and capabilities grow. The point of innovation is that there is nothing to be obtained by remaining static; innovation comes when recognising there could be a benefit in finding a different or better way of doing something that has always been done the very same way. Any innovation framework you use can go a long way towards advancing your personal development and career growth.

The Future of Personal Strategic Innovation

Look to the future to decide the skills you'll need

“If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old”

~ Peter Drucker

Innovation for corporations is necessary to assure future survival, and it is also necessary for individuals to assure their continued relevance in a changing work environment. The limitations of existing models are that they are just one way of looking at the world as it currently exists, and determining what is needed now. To be a more radical innovator, you need to think about the jobs of the future, so you can obtain and then offer the skills that companies of the future will require.

In its fascinating report, The Future of Skills: Employment in 2030, Nesta based its research on three key fundamental understandings: Understanding the history of employment is helpful for making future predictions. Economies in the U.K. and U.S. are experiencing breaks in trends that will have consequences when making employment predictions. Occupations utilise a complex mixture of skills, knowledge and abilities. Trends which are seen to be impacting employment in 2030 include:

1. Technological Change

2. Globalisation

3. Demographic Change

4. Environmental Sustainability

5. Urbanisation

6. Increasing inequality

7. Political uncertainty

Future workforces will need a broad base of knowledge and more specialised skills in specific occupations to manage these trends. The future skills Nesta believes will be most valuable to employees and individuals who need to deal with these trends and remain relevant in the employment market include:

• STEM skills for males and females

• Creativity

• Versatility

• Flexibility

• Communication

• Comfort with expanding artificial intelligence capabilities.

• Collaboration and openness to new ways of working as a member of a team.

In marketing, some skills will adapt more easily to a growing and mobile economy. Individuals who are adept at prospect engagement, social media, content development, website creation, and personalisation can help companies develop communication campaigns around specific targeted consumer behaviours. Instead of working in the same office with the same brand and the same marketing strategy, they can efficiently tap into a creative online network of graphic designers, animators, videographers, data storytellers and writers. Skills will grow and be tested as communicators of tomorrow use them to work as a group within existing brand guidelines or start from scratch to formulate new marketing strategies.

The future of work is both clear as day, and muddy beyond belief. Nobody can know for sure exactly what will happen, but Nesta’s research did conclude that around 70% of the people studied are in occupations with highly uncertain prospects, while 20% are in occupations that are very likely to decline. In an era of such uncertain prospects, personal development as an innovation project is a necessity for economic and personal survival.

According to Wikipedia, the meaning of innovation is, "A new idea, creative thought, or new imagination in the form of a device or method." It is imagining, creating and finding better solutions to meet new requirements, unarticulated needs, or existing market needs, all in a fashion that has never been followed before. Who knows, you may even be innovative enough to come up with an entirely new framework that works specifically for you!

At 1827 Marketing, we love to meet innovative, new creative and technical talent to build on our growing network of marketing and communication specialists who provide outstanding and insightful services for our clients. We handle all the functions necessary to simplify and streamline marketing activities that make an impact. If you are open-minded, skilled, fast and flexible, and have a fantastic portfolio to back it up, get in touch. We would like to hear from you, and find out more about how you would bring your personal innovative style to our modern marketing platform.