Innovation and People Skills
January 9, 2009 by Raj Sheelvant
With R&D budgets shrinking and markets retrenching in a worldwide economic crisis, technologists will need more than lab expertise to convince their employers to keep the research funding spigots open. The ability to communicate well and other “soft skills” are just as important as technological expertise when it comes to selling new ideas to investors or senior management according to Knowledge@Wharton article titled ‘Finding Money for Innovation: Develop Those People Skill’. This article reports on the outcome of a panel titled “Street-Smart Innovation to Align Emerging Technology and Business.” The article also notes that in addition, future scientists, researchers and program managers should focus on aligning innovative projects with company goals.
Due to globalization and increased competition, allocation of capital resource will continue to become more and more efficient. In this heightened competition for the valuable resources the allocation will go to the individuals or divisions that can articulate their vision to the top management. As the article notes, it is very important that those innovations need to be aligned with Business Strategy. Technologists need to answer questions – how will their innovation create or enhance competitive moat for the organizations so that they can be ahead of competition. They also need to compute and highlight the return on that precious capital. They need to demonstrate how that return on capital is higher than investing other divisions (like marketing). Not only that the R&D department needs to negotiate and influence other departments on how they can help both the top line growth and savings to the bottom line.
I think it’s very important for the technology specialist like software engineers to develop and enhance their ‘soft skills’ like verbal communicating skill, listening skill, negotiation skill, presentation skills etc. I am not suggesting that these new skills can circumvent lack of technical skills, but what I am suggesting that the ‘soft skills’ will help buttress technical leadership skill. It’s no longer given that companies will continue to invest in its R&D and Technologists need to become savvy and pitch in aggressively to get proper share of capital allotment.
Also check out my blog titled A New Breed of IT Workers.
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Comments (2)
Soft skills such as those involved in presentations and briefings are vital for future career success. Increasingly your promotion prospects have less and less to do with your technical competence and more with your people skills.
Peter
Presentation Skills Coaching
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