For all the (over-) use that the word innovation has received of late, it would appear that the hype is still significantly greater than the promised results.

There is no doubt that innovation is a top priority for leaders in all walks of life. However, many of these same leaders have difficulty getting their organizations to break-out of the “solo home run” syndrome, so as to transform their culture into one that lives, breathes and delivers innovation day-in-day-out; to create a fundamental, permeating and enduring buzz, rather than the “sugar-high” of a one-hit-wonder.

The main hurdles preventing an entrenched ascension to this organizational Nirvana are managerial and relatively easy to fix:

1. the under-development of agile innovation process structure
2. the over-development of risk mitigation
3. the over-dependence on centralized execution

These are simply symptoms of a process malaise that fails to embrace Open Innovation in its essence – and I’m not talking about acquiring a one-off clever invention, slick design or technological improvement from an outside source. Open Innovation means making the process of creating value open and collaborative to a broad and diverse community of stakeholders, so as to achieve incremental, accelerated and measurable results – at every level of the business. It means allowing participants to self-organize around an idea – ad hoc idea teams that work best when driven by:

• the interest that only curiosity can bring
• the task execution that only self-motivation can bring
• the immediacy that only passion can bring
• the diversity that only communities can bring
• the relevant expertise that only the web can bring

This is management innovation of the Open variety – and from our standpoint, the most important incarnation of the kind, as it is the platform that encourages, enables and endows all other forms of innovation.