People are naturally apprehensive about change. They fear the unknown. There is a reluctance to take risks. This can be particularly true in a successful enterprise. Success can be an enemy of innovation. Why mess with a model that works? There is little incentive to take risks and  try new things. But even successful companies are at risk if they stand still.  Polaroid Corporation was a leader in its field but digital camera technology dealt it a serious blow and pushed it into Chapter 11. Smith Corona was very successful making typewriters but the advent of word processors proved fatal.
Overcoming the fear of change is a key objective for innovative leaders. They will need to take this issue head-on. They engage people in a dialogue and discuss the risks and benefits of standing still or of innovating.  

...give them a watch.   

I met Vernon Barker, Managing Director of FirstPennine Express, a company which won a franchise to provide rail services across large parts of the north of England and southern Scotland.  

When the company was started Vernon and his team identified that the main issue for customers was punctuality.  So this was made into the key objective for the new company.  On the first day of operation in February 2004 every employee was met as he or she arrived at work by a director or senior manager.  Everyone was given a watch branded with the new company name.  It was there to symbolise the importance of punctuality.
The message was reinforced with town hall meetings.  Vernon and other directors travelled regularly on the trains supporting staff and meeting customers.   The whole company has achieved great progress;  it started with a gesture that symbolised the destination they were setting out to reach.

In this article on Entrepreneur.com Jason Potts argues that the focus on trying to achieve efficiency in the provision of public services blocks innovation.   

'For any given service (say geriatric health care), and for given citizen or consumer preferences and incomes, what is the most efficient way of achieving that goal? But in formulating the question in this way we have implicitly presumed to deal with a static conception of both government and the economy. We have implicitly presumed that: (a) there is one best way of achieving the goal efficiently; (b) that it is known or knowable by someone; and (c) that this best solution can then be rationally chosen and implemented. Any failure along this line leads to inefficiency, which is of course bad. Yet note that, in this view, there is no place for innovation. Innovation, along with uncertainty, entrepreneurship, imagination, experimentation, competitive enterprise and technological and structural change are excluded, by definition, because of the initial presumption that the one best solution is already known (or knowable) and that the problem effectively lies only in its implementation. The rational pursuit of efficiency denies the very existence of innovation.'

Here are some clever, creative innovations in product design that caught my eye.