In his book FedEx Delivers: How the World’s Leading Shipping Company Keeps Innovating and Outperforming the Competition, Madan Birla states that his experiences “with one of the most innovative companies in the history of free enterprise—FedEx—and my success in helping other companies become truly innovative” has shown him four key things about innovation:
- Everyone has the capacity to be creative.
- Creativity is a function of the mind and must be understood in the context of a mental model.
- Developing creative people (minds) requires the right mental environment (model) and the right leadership practices.
- A critical mass of creative people will enable the development of an organization-wide culture of innovation.