It's an important distinction that can have implications for your business.....check out this Business Week article http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/jan2011/id20110114_286049.htm 

by someone who helps entrepreneurs innovate for a living and teaches the subject at Northwestern. As CEO, there are important distinctions that help shape your understanding of how to best and most effectively lead your company forward. Lumping together the concepts of invention and innovation could stymie your companies efforts to grow. 

Video Preview "The Next 100 Years" - a YouTube introduction to a remarkable book
 

A few weeks ago I recommended an important book on the future of the US and the world by George Friedman. Click Here to watch a short interview with the author providing an executive summary of the book.  (It's in two sections: be sure to watch parts 1 and 2) This is book on critical future thinking (versus futurist) based on a hard analysis of the world today and a look through the lens of history. It should be required reading in my opinion for you and your children.

Some of the best and brightest CEOs run non-profit organizations today. And CEO is becoming the preferred title. In the broad spectrum, the only thing that makes an Not for Profit (NFP) different is the tax status - and how that functions to help raise funding. But operationally, NFPs need to and tend to be well-run, hard driving companies, with their mission being the driving force. The mission is protected by a volunteer board that typically has little business focus, leaving the business leadership squarely on the shoulders of the CEO and management team. Doing more with less is the constant status-quo, and keeping aligned with both the mission and stakeholders is the basis for operating.
 

During the past decade, we have experienced a large influx of CEOs from non-profits join Vistage to increase their effectiveness to beneift their organizations and gain useful perspective from their for-profit peers. Interestingly, in the last two years the value has clearly shifted to where the non-profits have some remarkably valuable insights and experience to share in the the direction. For-profits that need to sharpen their focus are beginning to understand the value of aligning their company and teams to a clear and purposeful mission.  They are also finding that when cash is scarce you need more than money to incentivize innovation, creativity and performance from employees. Their NFP peers have been doing this for years - and are quite good at it. 

I personally sit on the board of a Museum Village -( www.museumvillage.org), a local living history museum, where I serve as treasurer, sit on the Presidents Advisory Council for a local college (www.Stac.com) and help with Girl Scouts of Northern NJ. (www.gsnnj.org). Apart from the more obvious satisfaction of volunteering and giving back to the community - the opportunity to gain valuable insight from how these organizations function has added tremendous value to how I approach the needs of the companies I work with. I suggest for both reasons, that you get to know someone really sharp running a not-for-profit company - and see what you can learn. And while you're at it, volunteering your own expertise and resources isn't a bad idea either.