I just finished an executive education course on Public Sector Innovation. It was a terrific week – doing a full course in one week is very intensive, but when you’re working with a really smart group, as we were this week, it is exhilarating.

One idea that occurred to me in the course of the week was that we really need to innovate when we have a gap between where we are and where we want to be. If we have a gap, we can’t bridge it by doing more of what we’re currently doing – we must do something different. In other words, if there’s a gap, we need innovation.

Tom Fishburne captured this perfectly in one of his recent posts (you should be reading his blog regularly if you aren’t already…):

Here’s how we finished the class:

After a week like this, we’re all excited about innovation, which is great. But when we get back to our offices, we’ll meet resistance and cynicism. We’ll have to fight to get our new ideas executed – but it’s worth it. Go out and do great stuff.