Is innovation critical for your business survival and success? Are you dissatisfied with your ability to bring new products and services to market? Surveys show that most business leaders would answer both questions with a yes.

If you want to make your organization more agile and innovative, where should you start?

You could launch a big initiative with grand statements, training classes, and an idea-generation scheme. But I believe it is better to begin with a brutally honest assessment of what is preventing innovation from happening today. Organizations unwittingly develop internal impediments to innovation in terms of their corporate culture and practices. There is no point in running supercharged brainstorms to fill the funnel with ideas if there are blockages that prevent good ideas from being implemented.

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