The context of the use of reputation management was totally different than the direction I am going with it, be warned, but the idea for this post came from that source! They were talking about online reputation management and I began pondering creativity and innovation reputation management.
During the course of establishing yourself, your department, or your company as creative and innovative, there are probably some roadblocks that will come up.
- Do you have the reputation of being tedious in meetings? NOT innovative.
- Does your department have the reputation for being the data nerds? NOT creative.
- Has your company had a dry spell in terms of the new and exciting. NOT awesome.
Establishing your reputation as a creativity force to be reckoned with is one thing, but you have to maintain that creativity over the long term.
In my previous life I ran a department that was in charge of both volume planning and corporate reporting as well as innovation functions and strategic research. The numbers were important to the company, but if we got too lost in the millions of data points, we lost some street cred for creativity and innovation. Seriously, if someone comes to you for ideas and you give them Excel spreadsheets, something went wrong.
Kind of like establishing your personal brand, you have to live innovation and creativity, everyday.
Kind of like establishing your personal brand, you have to live innovation and creativity, everyday.
