For the last few years I have been attending various business and HR conferences which often had the same main topic on the agenda – the innovation. All participants, no matter what industry they represented, tended to agree that innovation is the driver of business growth. But then only few companies succeeded in bringing the innovative thinking into their organizations.

According to the renowned management consultant and educator, Peter F. Drucker, the general sources of innovations are different changes in the industry, in market structure, in local and global demographics and in human behavior. In another words, future is the source of innovation.

A non-profit research organization based in Palo Alto, California, did have a look into the future and analyzed the key drivers that will reshape the landscape of work identifying the work skills which will be needed in the upcoming years. One of those key drivers is the globally connected world which puts the cross-cultural competencies and the cultural intelligence at the center of business operations. The cross border collaboration is no longer the privilege of large corporations. Today any company makes business with other countries, deals with foreign suppliers and vendors, employs staff of various cultural backgrounds and opens operations abroad. We serve foreign customers, we send our sales people abroad to negotiate good deals, we send our senior staff on international business trips to work on important projects, we appoint managers to lead people based in various countries.   

But how does the portfolio of talent development activities in our organizations look like? Is it built of the traditional soft skills trainings only or have we managed to look into the future and bring innovation into our talent development strategies aligning them to our international business activities? In order to sustain our long term business goals it is crucial to understand that the future is now.