In February I attended a learning and development breakfast meeting hosted by Reed Learning (by the way if you have not been to any of their breakfast meetings you should , they are brilliant).

The topic was innovation and the main speaker was Jaideep Prabhu, co-author of Frugal Innovation (we got a free copy of the book and I also got to meet Alec Reed, the founder of everything Reed). Jaideep talked about innovation from a business and organisational perspective, thereby giving us an overview of what innovation is and some tips on how to drive innovation in our organisations. 

This was not usual l&d speak and the purpose of his presentation was to challenge us to be drivers of innovation in our organisations. Off course seeing yourself driving innovation in your organisation through learning is exciting, but there is just one challenge: You can't drive what you yourself are not. Or in more plain language, if you are not innovative, you can't help others to be innovative.

The truth is a lot of l&d teams and practitioners are not working in innovative ways. It will therefore be difficult if not impossible for them to be at the forefront of innovation in their organisations if they fall seriously short in that area. An article in the February issue of e.learning age magazine stated that up to 73 per cent of learning practitioners are looking to change jobs because they don't feel challenged or stretched where they are, and this is an increase from the previous year when over 63 per cent wanted to change jobs.

How are these people faring in their jobs and teams? I don't see them being innovative or driving innovation. So here is a question for us to think about, what should we be doing to be more innovative? Because we need to tackle this bit first before we start thinking about driving innovation in our organisations.