Innovation management policies and tools should keep challenging assumptions routinely clung to the organisation and its staff. It is not an easy task to change such habitual patterns, particularly when all seems to go fairly well, or even well. It is necessary to look out for changes – however slight – undergone by customers, markets, technologies, products, services and other elements of the organisation and to keep questioning what we normally think that we “know them to be true”, or what we regard as something that “will never work”. It is imperative to understand that staying in leading position means shedding old ideas, replacing them for new – at time experimental to an extent – initiatives in order to be faster and more effective than our competition. Of course, all of this needs to be subject to effective risk management.

It must be coupled with overcoming the habitual comfort found in ignoring or screening out what seems to contradict prevailing experience and point of view. It is essential to refrain from only seeing what we want to see. It is absolutely necessary to break away from rigid, at time fixated, thinking patters and enable fresh and different manner of observation of our surroundings. The ability to identify new patterns, connections and developmental path unseen by competitors is critical for taking innovation to the edge.

A serious task of the management is to keep asking questions. While inquisitive mind is helpful to the creation of innovation, it is important to refrain from discouraging questions that merely ask for excuses rather than inspiring creativity. What is needed is inventive and original thought that would enable both management and staff to keep seeking innovative solutions to existing – and future – problems. Another point, in this regard, that management should always bear in mind is that in most cases, there is never only one right answer to any given question. Allowing for several “right answers” creates wider scope of observation and examination.

Current pace of living, in all aspects, seems to require fast decision-making. This may lead to adoption of what first appears as feasible solution instead of spending more time and resources to look for better or different solution to the problem at hand. Multiple perspectives need to also be taken into account – such as those of the organisational clientele, supply system, social surrounding and our role in it, etc.