Insights: Over the past 12 years of consulting, I’ve helped many companies define and launch strategic initiatives. On most projects, I simply talked to people across departments, heard their ideas for improvement, and presented those ideas to the executive team in a cohesive way. Yet, the executive teams would often respond to my recommendations with excitement, praising my innovative ideas and approaches. The irony is that although the executives were constantly searching for innovation and the employees were eager to share their ideas, there was a gap that caused the innovative ideas to get lost--costing these companies millions of dollars in wasted resources and many millions more in lost opportunities.

Ultimately, I realized that what was missing was quite simple--people, and managers in particular, are not listening for innovation. Corporate culture trains us to use our analytical perspective to identify problems: to see what’s wrong with ideas and what won’t work. In most environments, the response to an idea is often a question that attacks the effectiveness of the idea and points to the challenges or the impossibility of implementing it. The idea then gets buried until it comes up at the water cooler with employees complaining that no one ever listens to their ideas.