OTTAWA A new report from the Conference Board of Canada has suggested that skills, attitudes and behaviours of individuals are central to an organizations ability to innovate.
The findings were included in the think tanks Innovation Skills Profile 2.0 (ISP2.0), which was released on May 28th.
The report identifies the skills needed to generate ideas, and take the calculated risks that support innovation, and was designed to be used by employees, employers, educators, students, governments, labour and communities.
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Skills consistently rank in the top three or four factors cited by business leaders as being necessary for successful innovation within their organizations, said Douglas Watt, Director, Organizational Effectiveness and Learning Research.
Skills are the enabling component of the innovation process and a lack of skills is a huge impediment to greater innovation in Canadian organizations.
Businesses that recognize the value and importance of skills will survive and flourish in todays global economy. This new skills profile is a framework for dialogue and action. Companies that succeed have a mix of individuals, teams, and leaders who collectively have all of the skills found in the ISP2.0, he added.
According to the report, skills consistently rank in the top three or four factors cited by business leaders as being necessary for innovation success.
The Conference Board developed the ISP2.0 with input from hundreds of businesses, governments, industry associations, organizations, and learning institutions across Canada.
The ISP2.0 is a product of the Conference Boards Centre for Business Innovation (CBI), a five-year initiative to help bring about major improvements in firm-level business innovation in Canada.
Individuals and teams with the right mix of innovation skills, attitudes, and behaviours will be better prepared to add value to the tasks, projects and activities that underpin corporate innovation performance and better bottom-line results. The ISP2.0 helps businesses get there, said Dr. Michael Bloom, Vice-President, Organizational Effectiveness and Learning at the Conference Board.
www.conferenceboard.ca
