Sustaining Innovation: Creating Nonprofit and Government Organizations that Innovate Naturally

Any organization can innovate once. The challenge is to innovate twice, thrice, and more?to make innovation a part of daily good practice. This book shows how nonprofit and government organizations can transform the single, occasional act of innovating into an everyday occurrence by forging a culture of natural innovation. What makes innovation occur naturally? Paul C. Light studied twenty-six nonprofit and government organizations in a wide variety of fields and discovered that innovating organizations have four broad characteristics: a commitment to controlling their environments (rather than the other way around); an internal structure that creates the freedom to imagine; leadership that prepares the organization to innovate; and management systems that serve the mission of the organization, not vice versa. Filled with real success stories and practical lessons learned, Sustaining Innovation offers examples of how organizations can take the first step toward innovativeness, advice o