Driving a Successful Innovation Culture

In recent years business leaders have been urged to create innovation cultures in their organizations to boost success.

The challenge is that many leaders don’t know exactly what this looks like and how to achieve it.  

An expert on this topic, author and speaker Sterling Hawkins, has spent a lot of time examining innovation cultures. His book “Hunting Discomfort” explains how to get breakthrough results in life and business. He will be a keynote speaker on innovation cultures at IFDA’s Solutions Conference.

Hawkins grew up in the food industry. His family owned and operated a grocery store in upstate New York for multiple generations. In a recent conversation, he shared a few insights about how to make progress with driving an innovation culture.

• Describing this type of culture: “It’s about being able to adapt, change and grow,” he explained. “It focuses on how everyone shows up on a day-to-day basis to adopt new ways of thinking and acting.”

• Why this is important: This type of culture positions organizations to adjust to the accelerating pace of change impacting foodservice distribution and many other industries.

• Science-based concepts involved: As one example, neuroscience research shows how people can learn faster when they embrace the uncomfortable.

• The type of mindset needed: “It helps to have an entrepreneurial mindset.” he said. “This enables you to understand what an organization has been doing for many years and how it can improve in transformative ways.”

• The role for technology: Technology is an important part, but it’s also about relational, structural and other aspects.

• How emerging technology fits in: “The goal isn’t just to automate what we are doing, but also to use technology to do things better than in the past. The role of AI will continue to grow.”

Article authored by freelance writer David Orgel.