If you glance back you’ll see what a long road we’ve travelled together. All this time you’ve kept in mind the important role that is now played by innovation in the development of a country and its business fabric. A clear example is the experience of economies such as Israel, New Zealand and Chile, where innovation has become established as an obvious lever for growth. The same thing is happening in markets and in individuals, because the micro is projected onto the macro and vice versa: innovation and business success travel hand-in-hand.
The evidence that bears it out leaves no room for doubt, and the result is that every day more and more businesses decide to integrate innovation as a central feature of their competitive strategy. For all, the theory is very simple: unleash innovation. The way it’s done, however, is the factor that gives rise to debate. How is it done? By improving the climate? Changing the culture? Rewarding the brave? Encouraging creativity? Through new technology projects? With new motivational strategies? Again, how?
The answer is simple: you must manage your intellectual capital and creative energy efficiently. This is nothing new. It means applying the same efficiency as in all other in-house and external processes. Some of these will certainly have reached a stage of excellence. So how can there be a justification for an exception? Why is intellectual and creative capital not being efficiently managed? Why are there still creativity leaks? Why is it that innovative energy is still failing to flow? There is no justification. But there is one explanation: the want of tools and know-how.
It is exactly this that turns this work into a unique tool. The Innova 3DX Method and the insight management that accompanies it allow for the deployment of mechanisms needed to manage innovative behaviour with efficiency. To achieve this, it explains how to monitor the three dimensions that generate creative energy or, alternately, that stall it: the creative ecosystem, innovative potential and passion. Thanks to its theoretical/practical explanations, the simplified assessment and self-assessment tests and the analyses and case studies from insight management – anyone interested in leading in this field will now have all the tools they need to liberate 100 per cent of their and their teams’ capacity.
By using the formula provided by The Passion Factor, it becomes possible to accelerate the operations of the three engines that generate creative energy and manifests desired innovations.
More specifically, the techniques and recommendations incorporated into the first dimension favour the generation of vital individual and collective energy needed to make new things, and also to maintain it during day-to-day activities. Good management of this dimension accelerates the mechanism which acts from three driver foci: organization (acting externally), the mind and the body (in both cases where energy is extracted out). Good relationships with these three foci are the basis for overcoming oneself and expanding one’s own limits.
The techniques and recommendations included in the second dimension stimulate the generation of mental energy, its focus and how to correctly channel it towards the production of new ideas and render them profitable. It stimulates both hemispheres of the brain and also the connections between them. It helps you to achieve maximum intellectual productivity, stimulating analysis and logic and fundamental thought mechanisms for competitive intelligence. At the same time, it makes it possible to detect the existence of self-imposed limitations that prevent creative contributions from emerging, and this is where the greatest enemies of mental clarity are born, along with convergent and divergent thought.
The techniques and recommendations included in the third dimension stimulate the generation of emotional energy capable of motivating and mobilising vital mental energy towards a common goal. At times it succeeds in arousing passion. It brings drive, direction and strength as part of the process of individual and collective creative empowerment demanded by this new era.
For all those in favour of inno-leadership, capitalization of diversity will be crucial, as differences make us more valuable. Homogeneity should never be our aspiration.
In our personal and professional life, all of us will experience stages that are easier and more difficult – good and bad playing cards, valleys and mountains. This book addresses creativity and passion not only from the point of view of the current demand for innovation, but also as a lifestyle. The insight management it includes is an eclectic method that comprises many disciplines to help the reader to see, understand and become empowered – and all of them are keys to innovation.
You can and you must govern your life with passion. Make choices, travel, with optimism and confidence in your own resources and those of the people with whom you bond. When you move, steering your craft in one direction or another, be aware of it. It will help you to know where you really are and whether you wish to advance, return or change course.
We offer three recommendations for this journey:
- Be humble. As Zen says: Do not look for masters but find them. Learn from your travelling companions, those closest to you, personally and professionally, such as your partner, parents, children, boss or subordinates. With the right attitude you can learn from everyone, even from someone foolish like Nasrudin, the idiot-savant whose Sufi tales we cited earlier.
- Move with freedom, happiness and without restrictions. Don’t judge yourself. Thought is much smaller than reality. In fact, sometimes it has no connection with it, and when it does, it only hints at some small glimpse. Our perception of reality grows or should grow as we go on living, as we go on travelling.
- While you travel, laugh – laugh hard and often, and enjoy the experience because, if you don’t, you won’t be able to stand the journey. You’ll become exhausted and won’t be able to see more than a couple of steps ahead of you. If you laugh, the journey will be lighter and more pleasant; your eyes will be caught by other happy eyes like yours. And what’s more, if you laugh you’ll breathe deeply and won’t have to weep to get your breath back.
Finally, we invite you to take part in an experiment: close your eyes and try to make your mind go blank. Breathe deeply and with awareness of what you’re doing. Try to empty your mind and when thoughts arise, don’t attach any importance to them, simply turn your attention back to your breathing. Wait a while, look, breathe again and look again. If some creative idea or image comes to you, throw yourself into it, set your creativity free with the passion of someone who knows they won’t live forever, who’s making the most of every second.
If nothing comes, nothing happens, then don’t jump. Draw your bow and wait. It will come. Be confident. The ability to emerge strengthened from every crisis is in your hands. Companies and entrepreneurs with imagination, awareness and passion who decide to raise the inno-leadership banner will be the leaders of tomorrow.