Sanjay Dalal wrote a good summary of the book, Built to Last – Successful Habits of Visionary Companies by Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras, on his blog, Creativity Driving Innovation In Business.

The authors summarize their findings from 3M and provide five takeaways to drive Innovation at any business:

1. “Give it a try–and quick!” – Essentially echoing on having a process to try out a lot of stuff, and keeping what really works. The key here is to do something. Keep on trying something new.

2. “Accept that mistakes will be made.” – Learn from the mistakes quickly, and move on. Failures are part and parcel of what creates new innovation. Don’t repeat the same mistakes.

3. “Take small steps.” – Experiment, but on a small scale. When something looks promising, go all out and seize the opportunity. This way one can do plenty of inexpensive experiments that create a funnel of would-be innovations.

4. “Give people the room they need.” – Without entrepreneurship, there is no experiment. Without experiment there is no success or failure. People need some time and room to experiment.

5. “Mechanisms – build that ticking clock!” – How do you harness creativity and build innovation? It cannot happen simply by chance. Companies need to create practices and tangible mechanisms to experiment, try out new ideas and innovate.