The company's most urgent task is to learn to welcome, beg for, demand - innovation from everyone.
Interpretation
Embracing innovation is essential for a company's success.
In this quote, Tom Peters emphasizes the necessity for companies to actively seek and encourage innovation from all employees, suggesting that a culture of innovation must be cultivated from within the organization. The urgency of this task indicates that staying competitive in the marketplace requires an ongoing commitment to creative thinking and adaptability across all levels of the workforce.
In practice
In a corporate seminar about enhancing workplace productivity.
My half-baked reading of history is that we continue to go through these waves of entrepreneurial explosion followed by merger mania and consolidation. Out of that come big sluggish companies that eventually collapse under the weight of what they've created, and are killed off by the next wave of entrepreneurs.
The simple act of paying positive attention to people has a great deal to do with productivity.
Nearly 100% of innovation-from business to politics-is inspired not by "market analysis" but by people who are supremely pissed off by the way things are.
Leaders don't create followers, they create more leaders.
The little people will get even, which is one of a thousand reasons why they are not little people at all. If you're a jerk as a leader, you will be torpedoed. And usually it won't be by your vice presidents; it will be on the loading dock at 3am when no supervisors are around.
Champions are pioneers, and pioneers get shot at. The companies that get the most from champions, therefore, are those that have rich support network so their pioneers will flourish. This point is so important it's hard to overstress. No support systems, no champions. No champions, no innovations.
Innovation comes ultimately from a diversity of perspectives. So when you combine ideas from different industries or different cultures, that's when you have the best sense of developing groundbreaking ideas.
Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.
What makes the United States great, the reason people wanted to live in the United States, move here still, is because of our ability to innovate.
When you innovate, you've got to be prepared for everyone telling you you're nuts.
Just as producers often give consumers things they want but didn't think to ask for, consumers sometimes come up with surprising uses for new inventions. When a new product appears, it can uncover dissatisfactions and desires no one knew were there.
The way innovating companies are designed leaves ambiguities, overlaps, decision conflicts or decision vacuums in some parts of the organisation. People rail at this, curse it-and invent innovative ways to overcome it.
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