Many companies are missing exciting opportunities to innovate, according to Professor Colin-Coulson Thomas, author of ‘Shaping Things to Come’: “People are copying others rather than pioneering, exploring and discovering. Urgent action is needed in many boardrooms. Directors cower behind prison bars of their own imagination rather than inspire and innovate.”
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September 8, 2006
Speaking yesterday to members of the Institute of Directors at the University of Lincoln, Professor Colin Coulson-Thomas author of 'Shaping Things to Come' argued that "Innovation rather than 'me-too' approaches are generally the route to market leadership. Asking the right questions and tenacity in seeking answers are the keys to success."
The Professor's continuing investigations reveal that every company examined has missed multiple opportunities to differentiate, improve performance and generate additional revenues by better exploiting corporate know-how. According to Coulson-Thomas "many of the companies visited could be much more profitable and many times larger."
Coulson-Thomas's book 'Shaping Things to Come' is designed to help directors challenge traditional assumptions and develop distinctive products and services. He believes many boards are asleep on the job: "In most companies only a handful of twenty categories of corporate know-how are exploited. We have identified over three dozen areas in which new knowledge based businesses could be established and over thirty categories of learning support services which training functions alone could provide. The scale of the missed opportunity is astounding."
The Professor points out "Innovative thinking abounds in laboratories and workshops. We could transform many aspects of our lives. New generations of entrepreneurs are straining at the leash."
Coulson-Thomas suggests: "The real corporate governance scandal is the poverty of imagination in boardrooms. Too many are like chapels of rest. Directors passively react rather than proactively create a better future. Caretakers would be cheaper. Investors should act to clear out the drones and get us moving."
"Boards need to turn corporate organisations into incubators of new enterprises," says Professor Coulson-Thomas, "Innovators challenge conventional thinking and question current practices. Rather than looking over their shoulders at others and playing 'catch up' they shape the future."
The Professor warns: "There are ten essential freedoms that boards need to establish if people within their organisations are to become more entrepreneurial. The first of these is the freedom to dream, aspire, build and create." His book 'Shaping Things to Come' contains exercises and checklists to help entrepreneurs create differentiated offerings, establish new markets and provide customers with additional choices.
Coulson-Thomas believes: "People should strive to provide customers with additional options, genuine choices and better alternatives to those that are currently available. Boards should seek alternatives to bland consensus and middle ways. They should champion reflection, debate and challenge; and instill a desire to innovate and an urge to discover."
Breakthroughs could occur in many fields. Coulson-Thomas believes: "The potential is unprecedented and entrepreneurial spirits long to be set free. What holds us back is passivity in the face of the opportunities at the top of so many companies. If members of boards cannot give a lead and shape the future they should make way for those who can."
'Shaping Things to Come, strategies for creating alternative enterprises' and 'Individuals and Enterprise, creating entrepreneurs for the new millennium' by Colin Coulson-Thomas can be ordered from Blackhall Publishing (Tel: 00 353 1 2785090; Fax: 00 353 1 2784446; or by email) or from www.ntwkfirm.com/bookshop.
Professor Coulson-Thomas, an experienced chairman of award-winning companies and Professor of Direction and Leadership at the University of Lincoln, has helped over 100 boards to improve board or corporate performance. He is the author of some 40 books and reports - including 'the knowledge entrepreneur' (Kogan Page) and has spoken at over 200 major conferences in approaching 30 countries. He can be contacted by Tel: 00 44 (0) 1733 361 149; Fax: 00 44 (0) 1733 361 459; and via www.coulson-thomas.com.
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