Will your business change in 2012?

It better! Investment in innovation is at the lowest point since the 1970s. Innovation is the art of disruption. It requires discipline, commitment and vision. Innovation is what matters when building a business and it will drive performance in 2012. If it doesn’t, we are sunk.  Yet for many companies innovation is nothing more than a “whoopee” idea espoused at the end of a long meeting.

Making 2012, the year of innovation will not be easy.  American businesses carry too much baggage within its management practices. The goals for shareholder value and devotion to the “Church of  Finance” have stripped our beliefs in innovation. The basic tenets of the Church of Finance – that today’s numbers are all that matter and the only place where the congregation can seek salvation is on Wall Street (or another financial Mecca) is killing innovation. The Church  of Finance, as with any religion, can deliver comfort and reprieve from a commitment to the teachings but when the congregation adopts extreme fanaticism which shapes every decision, businesses will never find salvation.

American businesses need a New Year’s resolution.  They must commit to innovation and invest in disruptions that fundamentally changes business, management and customers. Businesses will need a new vision – one that stops asking “why.” Instead the 2012 vision must dream things as they never were and ask, “What if?”