Driving Innovation: Investing in People and Process

Driving Innovation: Investing in People and Process. 70% of people leaders say innovating from within is important for meeting growth goals.

The pandemic has changed many things in the world of work, and the Intrapreneurship Academy at The Cable Center, in partnership with C2HR, was interested in understanding the 2021 priorities of human resources (HR) professionals across the connectivity industry. The HR Priorities Survey was conducted in the first quarter of 2021.

Given the fact that the pandemic is top of mind, it is not surprising that new concerns related to employee health and safety were identified among the top four concerns. Cultivating leaders from within and engaging high performers in a distributed workforce were also cited as paramount for ensuring organizational success. Let’s take a deeper look at how industry employers are investing in people development as a way to engage and retain top talent and impact organizational success.

Leader Preparedness And Resilience

In today’s operating environment, people leaders are concerned by a lack of skills required to address and navigate change. Building internal innovation in periods of uncertainty requires leaders to hone agility, resiliency, creative problem solving, collaboration and responsiveness. While 58% of people leaders note that the way their organization operates has changed significantly, only 24% of HR professionals believe their leaders are prepared with the necessary skills to respond.

Innovation On The Inside

IA Info 58 to 24While corporations increasingly prioritize internal innovation as a vehicle for future business growth, people leaders acknowledge that their organizations lack systemic tools that build in-house expertise and capabilities to usher innovation. This shift to deriving innovation from inside necessitates intrapreneurial leadership and process. In addition to spurring internal innovation, training opportunities are a key strategy for talent retention, with a focus on programs that have real-world applications and deliver measurable impact.

  • 70% of people leaders say driving innovation from within is important for growth goals.
  • Yet only 23% believe that they have a developed process of innovation.

Organizations are shifting from partnerships for go-to-market strategies to deriving innovation from inside. However, they lack a defined process to usher innovation.Traditionally, organizations have invested in acquisition capabilities or business development efforts. Equal investment in employee innovation capabilities pays off in multiple ways: It stimulates regular innovative behaviors that become entrenched in culture, retains high performers and creates intuitive innovation. People Development, HR and L&D leaders are now in a prime position to stimulate growth and capture talent in the process. To effectively seize internal innovation opportunities, people leaders must harness the intrapreneurial talents in their teams to equip them with the tools, capabilities, processes, and mindsets to successfully advance corporate innovation. An investment in internal intrapreneurship processes and capabilities yields an equally powerful result to the pursuit of external sources of innovation, such as acquisition and strategic partnerships.

Developing Leaders For Impact

IA Info people DevIntrapreneurial leaders are defined by their ability to adapt to change, take risks, elevate ideas to executives, identify and solve problems, practice financial literacy, teach collaboration, build consensus and navigate the changing workplace. Among them, workplace navigation and collaboration are the most desired soft skills for leadership development in 2021.

Intrapreneurship Academy enables organizations to derive innovation from the inside, even with a distributed workforce. Our high-impact, virtual training opportunities fill the gap between the desire to drive innovation from within and the need to have an innovation leadership with defined processes for bringing new ideas to market.

Our Driving Innovation course offers a deep dive into the principles of intrapreneurship and the process of innovation to enable your high performers to drive innovation, change, and success within your organization.

Leading With Agility is a highly engaging and interactive course to empower your emerging leaders to thrive in an environment characterized by unplanned change.


About The HR Priorities Survey 2021

Intrapreneurship Academy provides a vibrant community for resource and idea sharing, and a place for your intrapreneurs and innovators to create measurable impact through educational programs and conferences. For more information, visit www.intrapreneurshipacademy.org.

With a focus on business impact, C2HR serves a diverse and vibrant community of HR professionals in the technology, media & entertainment industry. C2HR providesrelevant insight, industry-specific analytics and a dynamic forum for learning and networking.

Content & Connectivity Human Resources (C2HR) is a professional association serving 4,300 members from 50 companies spanning the technology, media, and entertainment sectors. C2HR provides industry specific analytics, information, and resources, as well as networking and educational opportunities. Its groundbreaking initiatives include the Annual C2HR Compensation Surveys and C2HR CON. For more information, visit www.C2HR.org.

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