A tribute to Robert Brands, one of our authors who sadly passed away

This week, I received the sad news that the innovation community has lost a dear colleague.

I recently found out that Robert Brands passed away on an All Terrain Vehicle (ATV) weekend, doing what he loved: being adventurous.

Robert was a frequent writer for Idea to Value, and a much-loved member of the worldwide innovation expert community. Author of two books, Robert’s Rules of Innovation: A 10-Step Program for Corporate Survival and Robert’s Rules of Innovation II: The Art of Implementation, he was a prolific and well-respected blogger and expert on the topic, and will be sorely missed.

Below, I want to highlight some of the wonderful insights he has provided to the Idea to Value community from his articles. If you’re interested in the topic, you should pick up a copy of his books and read some of the articles below:

Communication is key for Innovation Implementation and Business Success: Sure, having a brilliant idea for a new product or service coupled with the top talent and resources may give you a rocket-propelled push at the starting line for the innovation process. However, unless your organization has a culture of innovation in place, progress on the innovation front will most likely be stymied.
Innovation: How to Recruit and Retain Top Millennial Talent: Maintaining the status quo and doing things the way they were always done (because that’s company tradition; or that’s how it was done when you were a new-hire) is not going to cut it. To compete for the best Millennial talent, organizations will have to change.
8 Innovative Baby Boomer Knowledge Management and Retention Strategies: While many baby boomers are preparing to leave the workforce; organizational leadership at most companies are not prepared to lose them. As reiterated in a McKinsey Quarterly Survey, the baby boomer generation is “the best-educated, most highly skilled aging workforce in U.S. history.
Can’t We All Just Get Along? Innovation and Bridging the Generational Divide: Multigenerational challenges and conflicts are not isolated incidents in today’s workplaces. While organizations can benefit from a diverse, multigenerational workplace, they must also have a game plan to overcome potential conflict and challenges.
Your Organization Needs a “Whip” to Help Build a Widespread Innovation Culture: To permanently implement a successful culture of innovation, your organization is going to need a whip (or even several whips, depending on the size of your organization) to stay on track. On the innovation journey from “best intentions” to “implementation”, distractions and deterrents are overabundant, and innovation has many places to lose its way.
To Successfully Implement Innovation in Business, You Must Fight Organizational Culture of Fear and Innovation Assassination: Within many organizations, there is a dichotomy between innovation and operations. Whereas innovation is all about shaking up the status quo, disrupting the norm, and moving processes forward and into the future; operations thrive when every activity and process is repeatable, predictable, and smooth.
Innovation Implementation: Organizational Culture of Fear and Innovation Assassination: There is a right and wrong type of failure; these creative errors fall into the “right type of failure” category. Spotting and encouraging the right errors can catalyze the elusive spirit of risk-taking that organizations should strive for.
Say What? How Mastering CEO-Speak Can Help Lead to the Successful Implementation of Your Innovation: CEO-speak is “quite simply…the language of C-suite executives. Mastery of this language is a pathway into their hearts and minds. Your abilities in this area can mean the difference between a home run and a strikeout
Innovation and The Art of Implementation: Dealing with Creatives: To get ahead, you can’t always play it safe and remain in status quo land because you’re scared. To implement a permanent culture of innovation in one’s work environment, you need to find, recruit, and land the right creative type of people for your innovation team.
The “Joy” of Innovation: What We Can Learn from the Story of Serial Innovator and Entrepreneur Joy Mangano: Lessons learned here include the fact that the best ideas are often right in front of people’s eyes, and that you shouldn’t sit on them and wait for them to happen

Farewell Robert, you will be missed.

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Nick Skillicorn

Chief Editor, Founder & CEO at Improvides Innovation Consulting

Creativity & Innovation expert: I help individuals and companies build their creativity and innovation capabilities, so you can develop the next breakthrough idea which customers love. Chief Editor of Ideatovalue.com and Founder / CEO of Improvides Innovation Consulting. Coach / Speaker / Author / TEDx Speaker / Voted as one of the most influential innovation bloggers.