Tuesday, January 10, 2012

20 years of innovations that work

For the past 20 years, we have facilitated hundreds of collaborative invention workshops and dozens of opportunity foresight cycles and market discovery efforts for companies in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia in a variety of industry sectors. Increasingly we are being invited to coach innovators and their executive sponsors. And lately, we are being asked to provide subject matter expertise where the topic is innovating in the context of successful companies.

We count the results of our work in the relationships we have with our clients, some of which stretch even beyond our 20 years in business. As in previous years, 80% of our business comes from clients with whom we have worked for over five years.

In all these engagements we have especially enjoyed our close and ongoing associations with so many innovation practitioners, who we see as fellow students of innovation learning what the crucibles of innovating can teach us. These associations have lead not only to the publication of the book, The Maverick Way: Profiting from the Power of the Corporate Misfit in 2000, and the article Innovation Midwives in Research-Technology Management in January 2005, but also built a robust body of knowledge on how to manage and parent innovations in corporations. We now find ourselves disseminating this know-how to groups of senior technologists in our client companies who are well positioned to have a catalyzing effect on others within their organizations.

Over the past five years we have witnessed a flood of books and articles on innovation and innovation management, not to mention the entrance of many consulting firms and business school sub-specialty programs focused on innovation. The flood tide has not ebbed, even amidst this Great Recession. Like a persistent flood, the shallow low-lying areas that used to be visible get washed out. What now appear as broader channels for innovating, actually end up being even more treacherous to those first-time innovators who navigate its challenges. Many of the charted shoals have become covered over with thin layers of processes and techniques. Many innovators have unfortunately run aground, while others have been left high and dry.  

As a result, we thought the occasion of this new year presents a chance to remind many of you what we believe are some enduring principles and practices for managing innovation. These lessons have stood the test of time for innovators, their sponsors and managers.

Content precedes process, just as form follows function. 

You would think this would go without saying, but there is a torrent of process techniques being pitched that many mistakenly substitute for clear, coherent direction. Many executives say, “we need more innovation,” yet few do their homework to confidently direct their innovators to where innovations are needed and why. When leaders do this homework, their innovator networks respond vigorously and quickly, and, most importantly, in the right territories.

Nothing happens except out of relationships. 

The white knight syndrome and the myth of the lone entrepreneur persist, but they belie the facts. If you look closely at companies with historically high rates of innovation, you will find not a lone individual but a vibrant, enduring relationship. Bill Hewlett and David Packard. Walt and Roy Disney. Paul Allen and Bill Gates. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. It seems extrinsic compensation, reward and recognition practices are hard pressed to compete with the undeniable reality that the human relationship is the intrinsic heart of the innovation engine. Think of the music that jazz musicians make when they get together to jam. Innovations at first are not marches but melodies.

Success is the enemy of innovation.

Innovating is disruptive by definition, especially to the incumbent who is inclined to defend his position. Companies that underestimate the resistance to innovation within their own organizations tend to be chronically disappointed with the returns on their innovation investments. Without sufficient and appropriate insulation, innovation efforts will remain unnecessarily vulnerable to “sibling rivalry” from existing and cash generating operations in the core business. 

“Innovation is learning applied to creating value.” 

This was how Al Ward (an expert in Toyota’s development system) defined innovation. Innovating is a risky, no-guarantee kind of activity. There is a better than 50-50 chance the innovation-in-development will not prove to be a commercial success. However, if knowledge is created in the process—knowledge that can and will be used in the next iteration—success can be viewed as a succession of adaptations, rather than a one-time embodiment. An older expression may be “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” Providing value to the end user trumps newness if you are looking for competitive differentiation, particularly when the vision of the innovation’s value allows us the patience for growth and sustains our efforts over multiple tries.

Play is the tuition for adaptability. 

The science of play teaches us that our species' ability to adapt and evolve is a direct result of the confidence we learn and gain in earlier play experiences. Innovation begins at the boundaries between order and chaos. Without order nothing can exist. Without chaos nothing can evolve. The ability of an organization to convert the “noise” at these boundaries into meaningful “signals”—even into innovations—derives from its freedom and ability to play. Simulations, thought and field experiments, scenario planning and messing around in the lab all contribute to the innovation’s survival and success.

When our organizations become too lean, they can become too mean not only in temperament, but also in average performance. When asked about innovation at Apple, Steve Jobs replied, “We don’t talk about innovation. We just talk about making insanely great products.” By definition, innovations are not average, nor even close to the mean.

Certainly other principles and practices of innovation may be of equal importance, depending upon the particular competitive, technological or organizational conditions  that confront the innovator. A few of these principles include:

•     Paying attention to subtle surprises in the market or the development lab;

•     Getting your innovation into the market with sufficient alertness to catch the serendipity;

•     Giving yourself permission to fail so that real learning can occur; and

•     Managing like a loving parent, neither too permissive nor dogmatic about early performance.

Instead of people looking for a formula for how-to do innovation, we need more innovators, sponsors and leaders who believe in the inspirations that can come from necessity. After all, as the saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention.     




This article was originally published in Innovating Perspectives in January 2010. For this and other back issues of our newsletter, please visit our website at innovationsthatwork.com or call (415) 387-1270.
         

               

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