Every day at 5 am Natalie Freel runs. It does not matter  if it rains, if  she gets out of bed and does not feel like  moving or if  she is the only person on the 5 mile track.  In fact, she likes her run solitary. Being alone forces her to rely on her strength to get her through an activity which 2 years before  she never would  have been able to do. 

“I must be the slowest runner on the planet,” she laughs, “but I really like it considering that I was in such poor health, I could barely take two steps without passing out.”

Natalie was once severely asthmatic. A change in lifestyle, treatment  and location allowed her to become a better manager of her health. Adversity, she found, was her best teacher. And after years of feeling sorry for herself  and  living inside a zone she felt uncomfortable leaving,  Natalie began to think, adapt and make a plan. She was forced to innovate and she became healthier for it. 

It’s not a far stretch to say the same goes for a  sinking economy and the entrepreneurs who find themselves struggling to survive. If there is a lesson from Natalie’ personal story it is that  tough times can create opportunities and fresh beginnings  for those  who can change  their attitudes and actions, for those who can innovate. 

 For those who are used to business as usual,  innovation  in  the times of  economic free fall is  perplexing. What can we innovate? How much does it cost? Do we need to get someone to lead the process? It turns out you don’t  really need  any  of the above. Innovation  means finding ways to be remarkable.  It means rethinking what you are doing and looking at your industry with new spectacles. The solutions though must be applied to  everyone, everything and  everywhere in the company and the process must go  on, non-stop. 

I have seen innovation turn  companies (local and global)  into  ideas-to-action  factories able  to compete only on  imagination ingenuity, inspiration and initiative. I have more examples of this than I have space to write: Starbucks.  Toute Bagai  Publishing.  3M. Lucent Research. 

In one company that I know every single employee in every single department are mandated to get together and share information on books they have read, conferences they have attended, papers they have poured over. To me, this is brilliant because it promotes a learning environment and also a space for employees to sit down and reflect, brainstorm and play around  with new ideas. These are all important ingredients in the innovation process.  

 Over the past months, we have all  responded to the recession with fear and pessimism that has been largely unchecked by a historical perspective. Those fears are as real as the doors we lock  or the doors we open.  For businesses, a recession may be a time to close marginal operations and  improve attention to costs and excess, but it's also a time   to    reinvent strategy,  to drive the  most talented to come up with  better ways of doing something,  to listen more  deeply to customers and to  look in new directions and set sail, albeit a bit more deliberately. 

Listening to all  the terrible economic news, it's hard to imagine that we will pull through but we will. History tells us that.  Those businesses  who are taking the time to innovate are the ones that are being prepared for the future. And just  like Natalie, it will be  a journey undertaken one step at a time.