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Innovating Around a Bureaucracy

Harvard Business Review

What do you do if you're a leader in a large, successful organization with an entrenched bureaucracy, and you see the need for innovation? The Internal Revenue Service (IRS), however, was successful in transforming its bureaucracy. Thus, needed process changes within bureaucracies should always be built into such initiatives.

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7 Barriers to Growth Every Leader Needs to Eliminate Today

Ron Edmondson

Granted this takes creativity, especially when finances are stretched, but always hearing “we can’t afford that” or “we aren’t big enough to do that” is never motivating to a team. I wrote a post on innovative ways to develop people , as an example. With good leadership desperation can often lead to innovation. .

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What We Learned About Bureaucracy from 7,000 HBR Readers

Harvard Business Review

We recently asked members of the HBR community to gauge the extent of “bureaucratic sclerosis” within their organization using our Bureaucracy Mass Index (BMI) tool. Here are our initial takeaways: The blight of bureaucracy seems inescapable. Bureaucracy is growing not shrinking. Bureaucracy is a time trap.

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What It Takes to Innovate Within a Corporate Bureaucracy

Harvard Business Review

In order to support corporate hackers like Atis and Windham and foster internal innovation, companies need to identify these individuals and understand what makes them tick. She found partners, attracted financing, and cultivated a community of internal supporters. Atis created a rich ecosystem around her idea. The prize?

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6 Rules for Defense Start-Up Innovators

Strategy Driven

For years now, huge corporations such as British Aerospace Engineering and Raytheon have completely dominated the market and swooped in to poach promising innovators. Inventors and programmers have found themselves swallowed up in vast bureaucracies, working on projects that they feel morally uncomfortable on and with less than savory people.

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If Greece Embraces Uncertainty, Innovation Will Follow

Harvard Business Review

Many politicians and commentators mention two critical factors in accomplishing this: increasing innovative capacity and reducing bureaucracy. Second, bureaucracy, laws, and rules exert particular influence in Greece because they help make life more structured and less uncertain. But Greece cannot stop there.

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5 Areas I Have Micromanaged in Church Revitalization

Ron Edmondson

Bureaucracy and process we know well. As with most churches in need of revitalization, our finances had been struggling for several years. Thankfully we had good people in charges of our finances and they had held the church together through very difficult times. Church Revitalization Innovation Leadership Ministry'