Most of the company do innovation but only strive for short period of time. Maintaining innovation is the way to success. How?

The first step is by removing fear from your organization. Innovation means doing something new, something that may fail. If people are fear of failing, they will not innovate.

Second step is by make innovation as part of the performance review system for everyone in the company. Ask them what they will create or improve in the coming year and then track their progress. They should been drive to the limit.

Third step is to make sure all innovation process been document and been past to everyone. It is just not important to make sure everyone understands it, but as well as his or her role in it.

Build in enough looseness into the system for people to explore new possibilities and collaborate with others inside and outside the organization. This can make variety of idea born into the system.

Besides that, it is also important to make sure that everyone understands the corporate strategy and that all innovation efforts are aligned with it. However, also create a process for handling the outlier ideas that don't fit the strategy but are too good to throw away.

Always teach people to scan the environment for new trends, technologies and changes in customer mind sets. It is to make the innovation always fresh and new to customer. Explain to people about the critical importance of diversity of thinking styles, experience, perspectives and expertise. Expect diversity in all activities related to innovation.

Good criteria can focus ideation; however, overly restrictive criteria can stifle ideation and perpetuate assumptions and mind sets from the past. Spend the time necessary upfront to develop market and success-related parameters that will take you into the future.

lastly, make sure innovation teams are different from “regular” project teams. They need different tools and different mind sets. Provide enough training and coaching so that when people are working on an innovation team, they can be successful.

Reference:

1.       Killer startups. february 15 2013. Retrieved from http://www.killerstartups.com/startups-tools-and-guides/killer-startups-how-to-maintain-innovation/

2.       Maintaining the innovation momentum. February 15 2013. Retrieved from http://www.processexcellencenetwork.com/organizational-strategies-for-innovation-continuou/articles/maintaining-the-innovation-momentum/