Understanding Innovation - A Parachute Consulting Guide: An exploration and explanation of Innovation, developing a picture of what an innovative organisation looks like.

‘Innovation’ can sometimes be seen as a black art, something that only the lucky few are able to do. Our aim is to show that not only is it possible for any organisation to be innovative it is very important that all organisations understand
how to capitalise on the wealth of ideas that it generates.

Innovation is a term that gets used very regularly and often without a clear definition. As the global and national economies struggle out of the current problems, it is a term that is likely to gain even more significance.

Innovation is often used to signify dramatic change, revolution even. This book has been written to explain how innovation can be nurtured within organisations so as to avoid the major upheavals associated with those dramatic developments. It describes what an innovative company looks like and how to start transforming your organisation into one.

Being innovative is important. As the global economy recovers – with new ideas, products, services, offers appearing faster and in greater numbers – organisations need to be able to carve out opportunities for survival let alone growth.

Stock market valuations still place a significant emphasis on ‘potential’ and a company’s ability to innovate its way out of a tight spot is only going to help the share price. For the public sector, preparing for difficult times ahead, innovation in practices and approaches will be needed.

Innovation is not just for the good times; having an organisation that can rapidly benefit from new opportunities for improving efficiency is going to be extremely important.
The paper introduces new concepts and refreshes some existing thoughts. Importantly, we offer a
view as to how an organisation can become innovative and present models and tools for assessing
innovativeness and improving the innovativeness of your organisation.
Throughout the paper we make reference to a wide range of publications, all of which we feel have
something valuable to say on the subjects of innovation and being innovative. All of these
publications warrant further investigation and we would encourage everyone to read them.
This report is written in three parts: the first looks at innovation in the round, presents a simple and
solid definition for innovation, and introduces some of our key models and structures for evaluating
and managing innovation; the second goes into some depth on the nature of an innovative
organisation; and the third part goes into some detail about transforming your organisation to make it
more innovative.