THE INNOVATION ENGINE AT RITE-SOLUTIONS: LESSONS FROM THE CEO

Abstract

I spent over 30 years  in a highly structured, hierarchical organization where good ideas could only flow top-down and where the firm’s intellectual capital was more defined by the level of organizational “box” that a person occupied than by the actual insight that person possessed.  In January 2000, as a “second career”, I set out to build a company that would be liberated from such restrictions of thought and, instead, would capitalize on the intellectual bandwidth of the entire organization to “Innovate Every Day”.  Such a company would be based upon two of my most fundamental beliefs:  “No one is as smart as everyone”, that is to say that good ideas are not bounded by organizational structure, but can come from anyone, in any place, at any time; and second, that the Hierarchical Pyramid as an organizational business structure is an enigma in the 21st century knowledge economy. An enigma more suited to controlling information flow than fostering innovation.My challenge in building such a company was two-fold: to develop a mechanism that could “operationalize” innovation by tapping the collective genius in my organization in a non-intimidating, fun way to generate these good ideas continuously; and, second, to institute a new organizational model with enough control to operate as a responsible, profitable business, but with sufficient flexibility to leverage and disseminate brilliant, innovative ideas across the organization – that’s all!!