Reynaldo C. Lugtu, Jr. There’s a reason to celebrate: Our country, the Philippines jumped 19 places to rank 54th out of 129 countries in this year’s Global Innovation Index (GII) from 73rd last year. Out of the seven pillars tracked by the report, the Philippines’ score increased in five: Institutions, infrastructure, business sophistication, knowledge and technology outputs, and creative outputs. However, our country’s score in the human capital and research pillar was unchanged, a key weakness that was highlighted in 2018 which positioned the Philippines as “below average” in regional innovation ranking. Our engagements with several business executives yielded a clear acknowledgement of the importance of innovation in advancing their organizations. There is a growing realization among business leaders to evolve and adapt to the 4th Industrial Revolution, taking advantage of new opportunities and becoming a new and innovative organization in the process. But the innovation gap, based on our assessment, stems from three areas of human capital, namely: Lack of common understanding of what innovation is, i.e. how it happens, where it happens, and when to make it happen. Lack of disciplined approach to innovation in many organizations. There’s a need for a framework that provides the guidance on where, how, and when to innovate, precluding the nebulousness of the innovation process. Lack of innovative leaders. Many leaders lack the preparation, mindset, and experience to lead their organization to innovate, which leads to an organizational culture that precludes innovation. Clearly, the kernel of the solution is to enable business leaders and employees to learn how to innovate. But how? Learning how to innovate does not start and end with an innovation workshop that teaches its concepts, nor with the conduct of a regular innovation fora. It should be sustained with an internal or external help that supports the employees in the innovation process. This is where innovation coaching plays an important role. Innovation coaching is inspiring and supporting your team to nurture innovation in the organization by utilizing an internal or external coach who provides you with tools, frameworks, and resource to help you fulfill your innovation and business goals. Innovation coaching can be employed during strategic planning to come up with innovative strategies and tactics and well as the execution of projects. Innovation coaching will provide you with long-term support over a specified period of time, from the start of strategic planning to execution. In our innovation coaching engagement with several organizations, we give hands-on support to challenge a company’s existing thinking and enable further growth. We push through the status quo by bringing energy, creativity, and a startup mindset into the organization’s team. As opposed to innovation workshops, which often are short, one-time sessions of innovation training that occurs over a span of a few hours, innovation coaching will occur over multiple sessions for a longer period of time. But both innovation training and innovation coaching are useful in providing tools, templates, and techniques to grow your organization’s innovation capability and results. A useful model that we employ in innovation coaching is the classic coaching model G.R.O.W. Goal. What are your innovation tactics? What do you want to move forward on? What can we achieve in the time available? Reality. Describe the current situation. What made you realize that you need to do something different? Options. What are your innovation options? What could you do to move yourself just one step forward? How far towards your objective will that take you? Will. What will you do next? What could stop you moving forward? How will you overcome this? When do you need to review progress? What do you need from me? To employees this approach to innovation coaching, we have seen huge improvements in the strategic thinking, creativity, and innovation skills of executives and employees. Although innovation coaching isn’t for every business, it can be incredibly helpful in starting the transformation journey of your organization or company. This is especially true if your company needs a long-term sustained support to improve innovation practices across departments in your organization. Combined with innovation workshops and training, innovation coaching can create a culture in an organization that promotes, fosters, and nurtures innovative ideas. This will bring our country’s competitive index to even greater heights. The author is CEO of Hungry Workhorse Consulting, a digital and culture transformation firm. He is the chairman of the Information and Communications Technology Committee of the Financial Executives Institute of the Philippines. He teaches strategic management in the MBA Program of De La Salle University. The author may be emailed at [email protected]