With the looming threat of recessionary times ahead and predictions that 70 percent of today’s revenue generating products will be obsolete by 2012, 2008 brings some unwelcome challenges to business. While many companies are hunkering down to weather the storm, global leaders understand that in economically challenging times it is critical to drive the market, instead of being driven down by it.

This understanding is stimulating renewed discussion among executives on how to establish a culture that drives sustainable innovation to build value in lean times. Yet, executive commitment to an innovation culture does not necessarily translate into high performance execution of the innovation agenda. Surveys from leading consultancies and analyst firms also confirm that most companies are lacking in leadership or tools to innovate successfully and consistently.

There is often a gap between executive intent and execution—a gap that can be easily avoided. For a sustainable innovation culture to thrive, the organization must understand two basic principles.

First principle: It starts at the top
The most common reason cited for why innovation workers feel their organizations fail to have an innovation culture is a perceived lack of management commitment. Organizational culture is created from the top down. In order to create a culture that supports repeatable innovation success, management has to make its commitment to innovation clear and unambiguous.

Here are several ways managers can make their commitment to innovation palpable while reinforcing it every day.
Invest in your people – You cannot expect your workforce to deliver to its potential if they are not equipped to do so. Develop your internal organization’s innovation capabilities by providing innovation best practice training. Companies like Hewlett Packard, Samsung, and Dow have invested in training programs to help disseminate innovation expertise throughout the enterprise.

Reward the behavior you want – Make sure you publicly reward those who distinguish themselves as avatars of the innovation culture you are trying to create. Leggett & Platt has elevated the visibility of innovation success through their annual technology forum where they also spotlight the winner of the prestigious J. P. Leggett Innovators Award, while seeing Delphi’s Inventors Wall of Fame, you can’t help but feel the depth of the company’s commitment to its innovation contributors.

Invest in infrastructure to support sustainable innovation – Research firm IDC estimates worldwide technology spending will slow in 2008. Yet, reports by leading consultancy firms indicate that investment in innovation will grow. Hence it is doubly important for companies to invest in the right technology and tools to support their innovation best practices. The easier you make it for workers to adopt the disciplines of repeatable innovation, the greater your return on innovation.

An important part of the innovation infrastructure is the framework to leverage knowledge – both the knowledge within your organization and that which is external to the enterprise. Don’t make the mistake of assuming that a traditional knowledge management initiative will meet the specialized needs of your innovation workers. They should be freed from fruitless searching for the concept needle in an information haystack. Designers, engineers, and scientists need high precision concept retrieval that’s tightly integrated with their innovation practices.

Give innovation workers visibility to corporate objectives – Often investment is wasted on ideas that are doomed from the start because they are not aligned with the needs of the company. Innovation workers must be able to integrate corporate strategy into their evaluation of possible innovation paths. Design to meet and exceed the needs of your customers and that of the company.

Promote the value of innovation – Everybody likes to

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