In October, the Wall Street Journal announced the winners of its 2011 Innovation Awards.

Compared to previous years, winners this year included big company names such as IBM, Novartis, Intel, and Abbott Labs. Start-up companies have traditionally dominated the stage for the innovation awards, but not this year.

A team of Wall Street Journal editors and reporters chose this year’s winners from among 605 applications from companies, organizations, and individuals in 31 countries. A total of 35 winners and runners-up were chosen in 16 categories.

Novartis won in the Health-Care IT category for a project that tracks medical supplies in Africa. IBM took home a bronze award for its supercomputer system, Watson, which defeated two grand champions this year on Jeopardy!

It’s refreshing to see award-winning innovation coming out of large, mature companies. It shows that old dogs can learn new tricks that can serve to excite employees, customers, and shareholders.

Whether your company is large or small, you should look for ways this coming year to unleash an innovative spirit among your employees focused on a critical objective, such as a new or improved product or service.

You’ll find that the journey to get there will pay dividends for your company even if you don’t bring home the gold, silver or bronze.

In watching the weather reports today, which show three to four hurricanes lined up in the Atlantic heading toward the eastern coast of the United States, I am reminded of one of the more memorable lines in American cinema.

In the 1990 “Die Hard 2: Die Harder,” the actor and former U.S. Senator, Fred Thompson, plays the Chief of Air Operations at Washington Dulles Airport and utters the great metaphorical line, “stack ‘em, pack ‘em, and rack ‘em.” With this line, he gives the order to his air traffic control staff to keep all incoming aircraft in a holding pattern until hijackers are no longer controlling the airport. The intent is to buy time until Bruce Willis (John McClane) can save the day.

So when I saw the colorful, eye-popping flight path this week on our television screens of the incoming hurricanes and tropical storms — Earl, Fiona, and Gaston, I thought of Fred Thompson’s 20-year-old line and the image of the jetliners lined up over the dark skies of Dulles Airport.

Whether it’s turbulence as a result of Mother Nature or man-made disasters, companies are best served by executives and managers who are able to keep their cool and focus in response to both seen and unforeseen events. These necessary attributes can only come through experience, effective training, and a corporate culture that values and cultivates them.

When crisis strikes, do not bet the company on managers knowing what to do. Spend time and resource to make sure they have the tools and know-how at the ready.

Have a safe and restful upcoming Labor Day weekend.

DuPont announced yesterday the winners of its 22nd DuPont Awards for Packaging and Innovation. Granted, the DuPont Awards do not yet have quite the cachet of the Academy Awards or the Pulitzer Prize, but they do represent the pinnacle of extraordinary achievement in “packaging materials, technology and service innovations.”

This year, Alcoa Inc. and Exal Corporation took home one of the top “Diamond Winner” awards for their new aluminum bottle, which offers a lighter, stronger, cheaper, 100 percent recyclable container, referred to as the “”Coil-to-Can” or “C2C” bottle. The new, high-tech bottle uses Alcoa’s bottlestock sheet and Exal’s C2C manufacturing technology.

Exal launched the C2C aluminum bottle in 2008, which is now used by companies like Coca-Cola, ESKA Still and Sparking Water of Canada, and Anheuser-Busch.

Ok, so what’s the big deal you might be asking? A lot in my book. The DuPont Awards illustrate a point that I have made on a number of occasions in earlier blogs on this website. Innovation is not only about the iPad, or the latest flat-screen technology, or a Mars rover. It’s potentially about everything your company is doing.

Innovation can and should occur across every nook and cranny of your business — from better and more advanced products, to enhancements in services for customers and clients, to improvements in internal processes, and to the very packages that contain your company’s products.

In short, if your company’s executives and managers are not actively pursuing innovations in all these areas – and strongly incenting your employees to do so – you may not only be missing out on possible revenue and market share, you may end up missing the boat altogether.

So this coming weekend, when you find yourself sipping your favorite beverage from one of those newfangled, super-cold aluminum cans, think about how your company can be more creative across the board.

I can assure you that a new can-do approach to innovation will put your company on a path to bringing home your own awards.

The word “autumn” conjures up a number of different meanings for me: the colorful fall foliage, the flickering light from a jack-o’-lantern, and the smell of hot apple cider.

According to the American Heritage Dictionary, autumn not only represents the “season of the year between summer and winter,” but it also refers to “a period of maturity verging on decline.” Now that tends to put a negative spin on an otherwise delightful word in my book, but unfortunately it could be a term to describe some Fortune 500 companies.

Like the verge of decline that some of us may feel with each passing birthday (not me, of course), some seemingly successful companies of a certain age may already be in a gradual descent. And they may not even know it yet. In fact, the lay-offs and cut-backs made over the last year in response to the economic crisis may be masking decline that is already well underway for some companies.

Decline could be the result of not moving quickly enough to respond to a changing marketplace or a more innovative competitor. It could be the result of reductions in research needed to spur promising new products or services. It could be from a decrease in spending on high quality employee and manager training. Or it could be the result of an executive team that has paused too long to enjoy the fruits of yesterday’s harvest. Or, it could be all of the above.

Mature companies which lose focus and drive are destined to lose ground on the competition. Such lost ground over time could indeed prove fatal.

Corporate leaders must constantly challenge themselves and their teams. They must regularly retool and reinvest in their employees–and their company’s future.

In doing so, you’ll likely chase off those pesky autumnal goblins, and increase your chances for a more profitable season.

Is your company getting a good return on employee investment (ROEI)? Considering the total investment you have in each employee, you need to know that the benefits derived from an employee are in fact outweighing the costs. Costs typically include the base salary, bonus, stock and/or options, health and dental benefits, paid vacation, sick leave, 401(k) match, Social Security, Medicare, payroll taxes (UI), training, computer, phone – and more.

Companies spend a lot of time and energy measuring and growing their non-human investments, and dedicate considerable attention to getting a good return. Boards of Directors and shareholders hold publicly-traded companies’ feet to the fire on these returns as they relate to the investment costs – and rightfully so. But do they hold their investments in human capital to the same level of scrutiny? No, and usually it’s not even close.

How do you explain this, particularly when human capital-related costs are sometimes the largest single expense in a company? It is frankly indefensible. Most companies think they are doing enough by measuring employee performance via a merit-based compensation program. Whereas employee measurement is important, it is no substitute for getting a full return on the investment of that employee.

So what is the answer? A company should start by caring as much for its employees as it does for its non-human assets. Many companies pay handsomely to protect their reputations and to enhance their images with expensive public relations and advertising campaigns. They also spend large sums on buying or leasing space, maintaining and upgrading it regularly; and they spend heavily on facility security, technology and equipment upgrades, and facility grounds and upkeep.

I don’t dispute the need for these investments, but they are no more important than the upkeep and improvement of a company’s single most important investment – its employees.

Companies should constantly challenge employees through value-added training and development. They should utilize creative compensation programs to spur greater productivity and innovation. Companies should meanwhile be aggressive in managing out those employees who are not holding up their end of the bargain – that is, those employees who are taking more from the organization than they are giving to it.

In short, an employer should seek to appreciate its largest appreciating asset by mining and growing the talent that exists in its current workforce. Improving your ROI is smart business, and so is improving your ROEI.

Companies across the country and the world are reeling from the meltdown of our financial and credit markets over the past few months. Some have already filed or may soon file for bankruptcy. Others are slashing budgets and payrolls to stay afloat. The lucky ones are merely tightening their belts in a very volatile period for which the end is not yet in clear sight. Board rooms and executive suites are at red alert in many corners of the globe, while anxious employees hope that the turbulence will soon subside and their jobs will be secure.

What’s a company to do? You can start by applying the same advice that Warren Buffet recently gave to investors. Invest. Now more than ever, companies should be investing in the employees they want to keep — the talent and human assets that will enable the company to pull out of a slump faster than its competitors. In most cases, all the talent that a company needs already exists within its own ranks. It is simply not being mined and nurtured effectively.

Walls, doors, and artificial boxes dictated by org charts typically get in the way of creativity and innovation. Show employees that you consider them a valuable resource with some modest investment in innovative leadership training and events that will surely pay dividends in the near-term.