Michael Hay, Vice President and Chief Engineers of Hitachi Data Systems and IT Platform Division Global Product Planning works with change both within his organization and with his company's customers. Here's what he has to say about creating and maintaining a culture of innovation in the enterprise. 

According to Hay, "Tenacity in an organization is the heart of disruption. Innovation is an interesting concept as it is the synthesis of insight to invention plus invention to practice. Most interesting is that achieving a solid innovation pipeline suggests institutionalized disruptive agents in an organization; an oxymoron for sure. 

"Institutionalization is required because to build momentum an organization must inherently trust the agents of disruption, and this can only occur over time. The combination of an innovation team and organizational trust assures that when the team has a new idea or adjacent teams want input they know where to go and make room on their calendars. Yet to be sure, even with a structured approach to innovation it is not a pristine affair often being riddled with messiness, missteps, and unexpected twists. Therefore another aspect of innovation in an organization is tenacity, and this is the heart of disruption. 

"Seeing something through until there is either a natural conclusion of termination or success rides the knife-like edge between belief and disbelief and ironically stresses trust. Our proposal is to talk about the inherent organizational tensions that result from acts of innovation focused on the apparent contradiction of institutionalized disruption."

As a supply chain professional who understands the intricacies of their work, it's worthwhile to push for  coordinated and sanctioned innovation that disrupts the conventional norms and moves your organization ahead of your competitors.