Bill Thomas asked:
Executive leadership development programs which empower managers to generate entrepreneurial ideas and construct innovative systems are destined to enhance organizational performance. As studies conducted by field researchers reveal, business acumen and creative leadership rank highly as the most desirable executive qualities.
Providing managers with the wherewithal to develop, implement and follow-through on their entrepreneurial ideas as well as their innovative systems should be the “prime directive” of any executive educational program.
To accomplish that lofty mission, today’s executive leadership development programs must address every facet of leading projects, programs and progressive initiatives by taking “deep-dives” into the strategies, principles, techniques and processes needed to perform these critical tasks:
planning and organizing;
visioning and questing;
setting goals and agendas;
delegating and coaching;
executing and assessing;
managing and consulting;
innovating and entrepreneurship.
What Are Entrepreneurial Ideas?
The generation of entrepreneurial ideas requires more than performing mere research or being creative – this task combines sourcing and processing your innovative systems for new opportunities along with executing a series of strategic “coup de grace”. Traditional executive leadership development programs simply fail to prepare managers for meeting those daunting challenges.
As Peter Drucker defined it: entrepreneurship is “both drastically (upgrading) the yield from resources, and (creating) a new market and a new customer. Entrepreneurship, then, is behavior rather than personality trait. And its foundation lies in (the rigorous applications of its) concept and (in the uncompromising practice of its) theory rather than in (a feeling, a tendency to take risks, a ‘kiss-from-the-muse’ or a single bright idea or in your) intuition.” (all words in parenthesis are this Author’s)
Therefore, entrepreneurial ideas are those patterns of thought, conceptuality and envisioning which give management the ability to describe the whats and whys along with defining the hows and who which satisfy Drucker’s version of entrepreneurship.
What Are Innovative Systems?
Our research has indicated a new trend in the realm of competitive advantages – we now believe that Imagination or innovative systems, not Knowledge, is the key driver of competitive advantage. All of our executive leadership development programs and skills training courses to help clients meet those challenges.
Innovative systems must possess all the attributes of a structure. It needs to behave, operate and achieve results synergetically (enabling us to “measure our experiences geometrically and topologically and … employ geometry and topology to coordinate all information regarding our experiences, both metaphysical and physical” – R. Buckminster Fuller, Synergetics.)
Following Bucky Fuller’s guidance, we suggest your innovative systems would contain these core ingredients:
1) Entities – a person, place or thing – seen as realities, dynamics, leadership, communications, ecological niches and relationships
2) Processes – a series of steps, procedures or techniques being applied or implemented in an orderly fashion – such as, exploring, creating, implementing and supervising
3) Linkages – any connection, real or imagined, between entities, processes or the system with some portion of itself or with the world outside the system – to facilitate energy importations, exportations and transformations
Executive leadership development programs which push the envelope of subject matter beyond the normal by helping managers generate entrepreneurial ideas and executive leadership training courses which feature these concepts of the Imagination Age (by developing innovative systems and not mere Knowledge) are sure to bring success and prosperity to their students.
Copyright © 2008, Mustard Seed Investments Inc, All Rights Reserved Worldwide.