Daily Inspiration: Mastering Innovation – “World class innovators possess a relentless focus on growth”

“World class innovators possess a relentless focus on growth”– Futurist Jim Carroll

Futurist Jim Carroll is running his Daily Inspiration series for the weeks of March 11/18 on the theme of “What is it that World Class Innovators Do That Others Don’t Do?” The leadership ideas are based on an original keynote he gave early in 2009 after a client asked him to identify these issues. He developed this carefully curated list based on 15 years of observations of how his global clients responded to fast-paced change.

It seems intuitive to know that every organization focuses on growth – after all, what’s the point if not otherwise?

But what world-class innovators do is stay focused on that growth despite any volatility or negativity. That’s what differentiates them, and it’s a powerful lesson that I learned while watching what organizations did during the economic meltdown of 2008 and previously, with the downturn of 2001-02. I used this fact in the opening to many of my talks that would unfold in the years that followed: “I’ve had a unique first-hand opportunity to witness what’s happening on the ground throughout corporate America as the events of the recession unfold.”

What I was witnessing was a series of CEOs and senior executives at the events that I was keynoting – often speaking before me – with a message that was essentially a relentless focus on growth. And it’s this leadership trait that I worked into the first point of my list of ‘world-class innovators.’

I remember well the clients that led me to this observation. I opened a senior leadership team at General Dynamics / Lockheed Martin early in 2009. It was a pretty dismal time for them; a defense pullback was hammering spending, technological change was accelerating, and old markets were declining. Speaking before me, his message to the team was simple and to the point, which I later worked into a slide deck. “Traditional markets are declining … we’re going other places that have better growth opportunities.” The focus was on new markets, products, industries, technologies, and new customer targets.

The same thing happened when I spoke at the Burger King global franchise conference in March 2009. The market for fast food was pretty volatile – consumer budgets were stretched, food fashion was changing quickly, and global market opportunities were very challenged. And yet the CEO got up in front of a room of 7,500 people and didn’t speak about the negativity at all – but focused on all the growth opportunities that he saw for the organization through product and marketing innovation. (I only had a Blackberry at this moment in time, and snapped a photo when I arrived early for my designated stage check.)

Similarly, the CEO of Trane Ingersoll Rand did the same thing – while construction spending had crashed pretty significantly, he saw huge opportunities emerging with the world of smart energy technology. When the market gets tough, find a different market!

I saw this mindset early, and often, from 2009 and on. . A senior executive at the global food services company Compass Food Group spoke to his team but two days after the stock market crash with a resounding message of positivity. “We have three choices,” he said. “We can panic. We can do nothing. Or we can innovate, change, and adapt – and focus on growth.” You can be darned certain that I wrote those words down as they became a foundation of many talks in the years to come.

All of these stories fed into my observation that the commonality of all of these CEOs was that despite an uncertain future, it was critical to focus on opportunity, trends, tomorrow, and the future – and growth. That became item #1 in my list of “what world-class innovators do.”

By the way, here’s the intro scene to the original World Class Innovators film. It was a lot of fun to film!

Growth matters because the optimism you focus upon in aligning tomorrow is one of the most important things you can do!