Demetris C. Hadjisofocli. This presentation provides some basic information on what is innovation and how it differentiates from Entrepreneurship. It gives a high level view on how Innovation processes should be approached within organizations to instill a culture of development and growth.

1. Harnessing Innovation for SME’s
Introduction to Business Administration
Demetris C. Hadjisofocli
Executive Director, Entrepreneurship Frontier Network, Ltd.

2. • Innovation
• The process of making improvements by introducing something new
• Entrepreneurship
• Willingness to take the risks involved in starting and managing a business
and the use of resources to implement innovative ideas

3. INNOVATION
• Innovation vs Creativity
• Creativity is coming up with ideas
• Innovation is bringing ideas to life
• Innovation vs Invention
• Invention is the creation of a new concept
• Innovation is reducing that concept to practice, and making it a commercial
success
• Innovation vs Science
• Science is the conversion of money into knowledge
• Innovation is the conversion of knowledge into money

4. INNOVATION IS CRITICAL
• Shift of emphasis from a regional industrial economy to a knowledge-based
entrepreneurial economy driven by innovative technologies
• Customer Driven Economy
• Customers seek alternatives, compare offers, and hold out for the best option
• Shortening Product/Service Life Cycle
• If you understand the technology it is obsolete
• Rabidly changing business environment
• It is not the big that eats the small; it is the fast that eats the slow
• Convergence
• Globalization of world economies, technologies and innovations

5. INNOVATION MANAGEMENT (TRADITIONAL)
• Key Driver for Change & Competitive Advantage
• Focuses on large organizations with
• Lots of resources
• Planning infrastructure
• Small SME’s are left out 

6. SME’S IN EUROPE
• Primary Source of Job Creation (68%)
• Primary Source of Economic Growth (63% of total Turnover)
• Suppliers of large OEM’s
• Majority employ less than 10 people

7. KEY FOR SME’S INFLUENCE OF
INNOVATION
• Using innovation subsidies
• Links with knowledge centers
• % of turnover invested in R&D

8. INNOVATION-LESS CHARACTERISTICS OF
SME’S
• Management by exception (Centralization)
• Little analysis of the impact benefit of any change
• High ICT Usage/Low expertise
• Lack of Resources & Knowledge
• Lack of Motivation & Incentives
• Start up strategies
• Chicken & Egg Syndrome

9. WHY INNOVATION FAILS
• Goal Definition
• Action Alignment
• Allocation of Teams & Resources
• Feedback & Results
• Performance Monitoring
• Collaboration & Communication between Customers & Suppliers
• Innovation Culture
• Grade; F - Poor

10. BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT
• Legislation
• Authority Support (Government, Regional, Local)
• Outside Experience
• Values & Motivation
• Age of the SME
• Industry Sector
• Business Activism

11. EFFECTIVE INNOVATION PILLARS
• Management of
• Goals
• Actions
• Teams
• Results
• Collaboration
• Technology
• Infrastructure

12. INNOVATION PROCESS
• Inspire People
• Reduce Resistance
• Ensure that everyone is participating
• Clarify the resources and define success
• Measure against performance metrics
• Feedback & Communication

13. ORGANIZATION & PEOPLE
• Built a winning organization
• Get rid of bureaucracy
• Eliminate boundaries
• Put values first
• Cultivate leaders
• Create learning culture
• Harness your people
• Involve everyone
• Make everybody a team player
• Stretch
• Instill confidence
• Make business fun

14. INNOVATION LEADERSHIP
• Leaders who can energize, excite and inspire rather than hinder, depress, and
control.
• Create a Vision and then ignite the organization to make the vision a reality
• Micromanagement (Bad)
• Everyone should be encouraged to be involved and new ideas should be welcomed
• Lead by example
• Get people to see exciting opportunities and possibilities for the future through
positive attitude
• People change and unlock their inner power when they are emotionally engaged
and committed

15. MAKE RELENTLESS INNOVATION A WAY OF
LIFE
• Lead innovation, emphasize opportunities not problems, and encourage
innovative behavior
• Establishing the culture of innovation requires a broad and sustained effort
• Questions are critical to innovation, so start with creating a culture of
questioning
• Exploration of possibilities, discoveries, innovation, and progress start with
challenging assumptions, asking searching “Why?” and “What if?” questions,
and playing “What if” scenarios
• Encourage your people to challenge assumptions
• Reward both individual and collective contributions
• Celebrate success

16. ENCOURAGE ENTREPRENEURIAL
CREATIVITY AND EXPERIMENTATION
• Develop entrepreneurial staff and create a corporate climate that
encourages rule-breakers and outside-the-box thinkers
• Experimentation by definition is a trial-and-error process, but
experimentation is also the key to discovery
• Without action, you cannot know whether or not your innovative
ideas will actually work

17. INVOLVE EVERYONE, EMPOWER AND
TRUST EMPLOYEES
• Talented and empowered human capital is the prime ingredient of
organizational success
• A critical feature of successful teams, especially in knowledge-driven
enterprises, is that they are invested with a significant degree of
empowerment, or decision-making authority
• Formulate stretch goals, provide resources, and empower your people
• Find a balance between hands-off and autocratic management styles

18. BUILD TEAMS AND PROMOTE TEAMWORK,
LEVERAGE DIVERSITY
• Teamwork is essential for competing in today's global arena. Build a star team, not a
team of stars
• Diversity of thought, perception, background and experience enhance the creativity and
innovation
• A team should not just be diverse; it has to make the most of it
• Involve everyone, facilitate cross-pollination of ideas, build and empower cross-functional
teams if you wish to harness the power of diversity
• Challenge people from different disciplines and cultures to come up with something
better together and achieve creative breakthroughs.

19. MOTIVATE, INSPIRE AND ENERGIZE PEOPLE, RECOGNIZE
ACHIEVEMENTS
• Financial rewards do encourage people to produce results
• But the kind of ownership that really generates energy is not
financial; It is emotional
• Set stretch goals – they energize people. Become a positive,
encouraging person
• Give people a sense of responsibility and make them feel that their
actions make a difference
• Communicate with people frequently and praise them

20. ENCOURAGE RISK TAKING
• Take risks! Don't play it safe!
• Making mistakes is essential to innovation and organizational growth, as long
as systems are developed to learn from failures and to avoid making the same
mistake twice
• The more people fail, the more they succeed
• They learn from taking action, from mistakes, from feedback, from getting their
hands dirty
• Treat failures as learning opportunities
• Develop a tolerance for mistakes and give your people freedom to fail, learn from
failures, and start again more intelligently

21. MAKE BUSINESS FUN
• Fun must be a big element in your business strategy
• No one should have a job they don't enjoy
• If you don't wake up energized and excited about tackling a new set of challenges,
then most likely you are in the wrong job

22. MANAGE LESS
• It is amazing how much people will do when they are not told
what to do by management
• In the new knowledge driven economy, people should make
their own decisions
• Managing less is managing better
• Close supervision, control and bureaucracy kill the
competitive spirit of the company
• Weak managers are the killers of business; they are the job
killers
• You cannot manage self confidence into people

23. CHANGE IS AN OPPORTUNITY
• Change is a big part of the reality in business
• Willingness to change is a strength, even if it means plunging part of the company
into total confusion for a while
• Keeping an eye out for change is both exhilarating and fun

24. GET RID OF BUREAUCRACY
• The way to harness the power of people is
• Turn them loose
• Get the management layers off their backs
• Bureaucratic shackles off their feet
• Functional barriers out of their way
• Bureaucracy is the enemy
• Drop unnecessary work
• Delayer! Create a flat responsive organization
• Cross-pollinate to make faster and better decisions
• Encourage employees to identify problems and come up with solutions
• Make your workplace more informal

25. ELIMINATE BOUNDARIES
• In order to make sure that people are free to reach for the impossible, you must
remove anything that gets in their way
• Boundary-less describes an open organization free of bureaucracy and anything else
that prevents the free flow of ideas, people, decisions
• Informality, fun and speed are the qualities found in a boundary-less organization

26. CREATE A LEARNING CULTURE
• Turn your company into a learning organization
• Spark free flow of communication and exchange of ideas
• The desire, and the ability, of an organization to continuously learn from any source,
anywhere - and to rapidly convert this learning into action - is its ultimate
competitive advantage

27. INVOLVE EVERYONE
• Business is all about capturing intellect from every person
• The way to engender enthusiasm is to allow employees far more
freedom and far more responsibility
• Start with yourself...
• Encourage people to take initiative...
• Use the brains of every worker...
• Create an atmosphere where workers feel free to speak out...

28. CONSTANTLY FOCUS ON INNOVATION
• You must constantly focus on innovation
• Observe competitors
• You must constantly produce more for less through intellectual
capital
• Look for the quantum leap – not incremental
• The fundamentals have got to be more education
• More information knowledge, faster speeds, more technology
across the board

29. INNOVATION II
• You Innovate to
• Improve products and services
• Retain existing and win new customers
• Find new ways to solve a problem
• Save money
• Enhance your jobs
• Make a task easier, faster and/or more enjoyable
• Increase your promotion potential
• Achieve great results and have fun

30. INNOVATION III
• Forms and Sources of Innovation
• Innovation can be incremental or radical
• Innovation can result from technology transfer or through
development of new business models and concepts
• Innovation can be technological, organizational, presentational, etc.

31. HARD VS. SOFT INNOVATION
• Hard Innovation is organized R&D characterized by strategic
investment in innovation, be it high-risk-high-return radical
innovation or low-risk-low-return incremental innovation
• Soft Innovation is the clever, insightful, useful ideas that just
anyone in the organization can think up (SME)

32. SPEED
• Speed is everything
• Speed is the indispensable ingredient of competitiveness
• Speed, simplicity and self-confidence are closely intertwined
• Simplify the organization and instill confidence, and you will
create the foundation for an organization that incorporates
speed into the fabric of the company

33. SPEED II – THE SEQUEL
• Fast Thinking Road-mapping
• Anticipate, and spot trends
• Let best ideas win
• Fast Decision-making
• Setting Rules and Guiding Principles
• Reassessing Constantly Past Decisions
• Getting Rid of the Bureaucracy
• Fast to Market
• Launching a Crusade
• Own Your Competitive Advantage
• Institutionalizing Innovation
• Rapid Experimentation

34. REMEMBER
• Inspire
• Set Benchmarks
• Let them Loose
• Trust
• Speed
• Leadership
• Risk
• Motivation
• Incentives
• Knowledge Assets
• Failing is good

35. MAKE BUSINESS FUN
• As business today is about passion and creating new things, fun has become a big
element in the business strategy of many highly successful businesses
• Make fun an important part of your corporate culture to enable relentless
innovation and create an inspiring culture
• "What's really driving the new economy – and confounding the grand pooh-bahs of
the old one – is that individuals are having a huge impact and an awful lot of fun
• People should be happy at work and have fun
• Encourage just-for-fun programs
• Find some humor in your failures. Don't take yourself so seriously. Loosen up, and
everybody around you will loosen up. Have fun. Show enthusiasm – always

36. THANKS
Questions