An Interview With NewNorth Center President Nate Young

A Creative, Disciplined Approach to Innovation

2/20/2012

It seems that every couple of years, a new buzzword makes its way into the business lexicon. Lean.
Value-add. New Normal. Lately, that word has been “innovation,” as economic experts throughout the Midwest point to innovation as the key to our region’s continued economic revitalization.

Why is innovation so important? How can businesses become more innovative? Innovation expert and NewNorth Center President Nate Young recently sat down with us to answer these questions and encourage Midwest business leaders to be courageous, step out of their comfort zones, and embrace innovation.

Why is innovation so crucial to our region’s economic revitalization?

Most companies around the Midwest have become as lean as they can get. They’ve optimized these left-brain systems, something that falls naturally within most business leaders’ comfort zones. Now it’s time to get busy on the right-brain systems: intuition and creativity. After all, you can’t simply lean your way into the future; you have to create it.

What role does company culture play in innovation?

It’s huge. The key to innovation is getting innovation practices indoctrinated in and accepted by the whole workforce, making it everyone’s responsibility to own it. A company that says, “You’re a line worker; just focus on being a line worker” will be much less successful than one that says, “You’re a line worker, and you have specialized knowledge and ideas about our products that we can all benefit from.” People feel empowered when leadership says to them, “We want all of you.” If you have a culture of innovation, where everyone believes it’s their job to do their job better in new and improved ways, success and growth will follow.

How important is diversity?

I think it’s very important. In the media, diversity is equated with tolerance, but it’s really more than that. It’s about leveraging other points of view to make your own richer. Diversity interrupts conventional thinking; without it, you just keep doing what you’ve always done.

What three things can companies do to strengthen innovation within their organizations?

First, set the tone at the top that innovation is expected of everybody. If the C suite gets it — if they’re “enlightened leaders” — then the behavior follows.

Second, ensure that training around a disciplined, creative process is required and ubiquitous. I remember 15 or so years back when quality training was required of everybody throughout a manufacturing division. This was an excellent idea. Now show me a CEO who is courageous enough to say, “Let’s bring creative thought to every group within our organization and train people how to do it well so that we can reap the benefit.” We do not have enough CEOs out there who do that, and I’m looking! This is my challenge to readers ... be the first company in your area that can expect creative thought from every team member; you’ll have a strategic advantage you’ve never dreamed of.

And third?

Incentivize your people to be creative — not just the sales team and, by all means, not just the management team, but all staff. And it doesn’t have to be money. Creative people do much better when rewarded with recognition.

How does NewNorth Center help its clients become more innovative?

Most of our clients have inherently strong logical minds. We help them see that they have the capacity to have just as strong an intuitive mind, and then we show them what happens when you combine the two.

What happens?

You can better harvest ideas, improve systems, streamline processes, use people’s capabilities at their fullest, bring in new ways of thinking, and challenge legacy thoughts and ideas — everything from coming up with brand new ideas to being more competitive by thinking differently.

Can you give an example?

Sure. We have a client that’s an injection molder, which can often be a commodity business. Through applying a creative, disciplined process to innovation, the client started thinking beyond the norm. They started asking questions like, “How can we make the part faster? How can we make it better? How do we get our product inserted into the piece it needs to go in better? How do we naturally take this on as a component of the job, versus simply delivering on what the customer asks? How can we optimize the process creatively?” Their customers are thrilled, because they know when they source something to our client, the injection molder will approach it differently than anyone else.

Any final thoughts?

One thing people don’t tend to realize about NewNorth Center is that we’re a nonprofit organization. We’re set up to be a resource for the Midwest. We exist to encourage leaders to step out of their comfort zones and embrace this new frontier of a creative, disciplined approach to innovation.

Very simply, innovation means doing things in a new way, taking creativity and applying it practically to a specific situation. I can’t think of anyone at any organization, whether a groundskeeper or a president, who won’t be well-served by doing that.