Innovation: A PM Core Competency

Kevin Coleman is a highly skilled senior level project and program manager/advisor with experience leading projects with labor budgets ranging from a few hundred thousand dollars to multi-million dollar budgets across multiple industries.

  Estimating   Innovation   Strategy  

“Innovate or die” is becoming quite a popular saying as of late. While there are a number of reasons for this, perhaps the best is that it’s absolutely true. This article was prompted by a corporate recruiter asking me if I knew someone who would be a good program manager for a global digital innovation strategic initiative for their client.

Encouraging innovation is much tougher than it sounds. Innovations are about the new, unfamiliar and often unknown—and those attributes often equate to additional time/delays. How do you encourage innovation?

Today, stimulating idea generation and creativity that is essential for innovation is a challenge for all management—and that goes for program and project managers as well. We must remember, with innovation comes risk…and those risks are often challenging.

“I know many organizations whose processes and culture impede innovation. I know of far less that encourage innovation and the risks that come with it.” — Mark Evens, PM

There are a number of impediments when it comes to innovation within organizations large and small. First of all, you must overcome inertia. Like the old saying goes, “Bodies at rest tend to stay at rest.” You will also find continuous naysayers, and there will be resistance (which often borders on derailment efforts) from those who may …

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