Innovation is vital to both competitive advantage and long-term success. Also investment decisions now tend to be tied closely to company’s ability to innovate. Following Robert Bolton, the co-leader of KPMG’s Global HR Transformation Center of Excellence, HR must rise to this channel. He provides practitioners and advisors of HR with a guide for bringing about the cultural change needed to build innovation into the way people at all levels think and work every day.

 His conclusion: HR’s unique opportunity
« There is considerable evidence that HR continues to experience a credibility issue and that it is perceived to lack demonstrable strategic impact. This does not, however, have to be the case.

On the contrary, the C-suite’s current and probably permanent eagerness to develop a culture of continuous innovation leaves HR facing a unique opportunity – and a clear and simple choice. HR directors can either continue to pursue arguably generic models and ‘best’ practices in the hope that this way of working will deliver their leadership’s desires. Or HR can use its unchallenged ownership of a diverse range of key levers, to uniquely configure processes and practices and deliver a best fit (rather than best practice) approach to innovation – and to subsequently hardwire into their organization’s DNA the ability to generate breakthrough innovation on a continuous basis.

In the medium to long term, only one of these options is likely to position HR as a strategic partner that adds significant and tangible value. One of these options will see HR survive and thrive as an indispensible value creator. The other is likely to see it wither away. »

Read the KPMG Guide « HR as a driver for organizational innovation »