AgProgress topic: The new U.S. government and trade with Canada

I'll be covering PMG's AgProgress Conference in Kananaskis, Alta., next week. One of the keynote speakers is an American futurist and author named Jim Carroll. He will speaking about the U.S. economy, the new Obama administration, and what this might mean for trade with Canada. I poked around his website today, and while he's probably pretty good at sticking to the topic, Carroll could easily go on a tangent about innovation. That seems to be an important theme in his talks and books.

I pulled the following two lists off his website. You can use these to test your farm business team's openness to new ideas:

10 signs that you've got an innovation dysfunction

1. People laugh at new ideas

2. Someone who identifies a problem is shunned

3. Innovation is the privileged practice of a special group

4. The phrase, "you can't do that because we've always done it this way" is used for every new idea

5. No one can remember the last time anyone did anything really cool

6. People think innovation is about R&D

7. People have convinced themselves that competing on price is normal

8. The organization is focused more on process than success

9 There are lots of baby boomers about, and few people younger than 25

10. After any type of surprise -- product, market, industry or organizational change -- everyone sits back and asks, "Wow, where did that come from?"

Carroll also has this list called "How do innovative organizations differ?"

—Ideas flow freely throughout the organization

—Subversion is a virtue

—Success and failure are championed

—There are many, many leaders who encourage innovative thinking, rather than managers who run a bureacracy

—There are creative champions throughout the organization -- people who thrive on thinking about how to do things differently

—Ideas get approval and endorsement

—Rather than stating "it can't be done," people ask, "how could we do this?"

—People know that in addition to R&D, innovation is also about ideas about to "run the business better, grow the business and transform the business"

—The word "innovation" is found in most job descriptions as a primary area of responsibility, and a percentage of annual renumeration is based upon achievement of explicitly defined innovation goals.