Slide thumbnailInnovation team members are differentTalent Development

Talent Development

Perspective in an Innovation Organization

An introduction to BlueCallom for Talent Development Teams

Almost all corporations have very good structures to attract, select, hire and onboard their employees. Innovation teams are no different from a birds-eye view. However there are some profound difference  a talent management or HR team need to be aware of.
SKILLS – in the sense of learned and perfected behavior or knowledge is of rather low priority when hiring innovation team members. Whether somebody is an exceptional or just mediocre engineer, marketeer, manager, or of any other occupation, makes no big difference. But there is something else absolutely critical for being a successful innovator:
COGNITIVE ABILITIES – are critical to contribute to breakthrough innovation. There are eight cognitive abilities we found most critical: Curious, Courageous, Clairvoyant, Competitive, Creative, Collaborative, Communicative, Continuous. To identify those talents conventional CVs don’t help and most other tools fail to make an assessment. BlueCallom developed an 8-C-Test with approximately 100 questions for a first  impression and interview questions to find out more.


Making a difference

You are making a difference by understanding the value of innovation for your company and the fact that innovation team members are fundamentally different from other enterprise employees. Enterprise employees are successful, most valuable, and efficient when they understand the rules, regulations, and existing processes and follow them perfectly.
Innovation Team Employees are successful and most valuable when they question everything the company produces, sells, and delivers today and find new ways and solutions that outperform everything on the market.

Corporations, lawmakers, and unions have evolved to balance the interests between employees and corporations. Part of that arrangement is to make everybody more or less equal. You will need to find ways to make innovators fit into that structure without jeopardizing their output.

BlueCallom is happy to help.


Innovation Framework Relevancy

There are two sections of the Innovation Framework that are highly relevant when attracting, selecting and hiring talents. One general aspect is under “PRINCIPLES” where team requirements are discussed.

Another critical aspect is in the “ORGANIZATION: section where we discuss aspects of compensation, motivation and long term development aspects.

For being able to better understand the activities performed by the innovation teams, it is certainly helpful to explore the Innovation Journey of the Deep Innovation Design method. Creating a multi-billion product innovation is not a ‘walk in the park’ and not something that is developed on a playground :).


Knowledge Base

The BlueCallom Corporate Innovation Framework (BCIF) is an important basis for almost all general innovation understanding. The corresponding education programs include the Innovation Executive Workshops and the BlueCallom Corporate Innovation Framework training.

You find some more helpful educational material in the Learning Videos section or under white papers.