Innovating To Win

It’s Not Easy Being Green

Have you noticed the growing coverage in the press about green innovation?  It seems you can’t turn around without bumping into yet another article about a company that is trying to associate itself with the green movement.  But all this green innovation is putting a lot of pressure on organizations.

It’s not as though innovation was not already a key priority for business.  Changes in the global competitive landscape, aging products and intellectual property, brain drain driven by generational workforce turnover, and an unstable economic climate are all factors that have raised innovation to the forefront of the C-exec consciousness.  Now add to the list the pressure to be green.

The drivers of green innovation within companies can very quite a bit.  For some, it is forced upon them by governmental regulators.  For other, shareholder or popular sentiment creates an overwhelming tsunami of demand that must be answered. 

Whatever the reason your organization is looking at moving in the direction of eco-social responsibility, the question that one is inevitably faced with remains the same.  How can greenness be achieved in a manner that is compatible with other corporate goals of growth and profitability?  Many companies are struggling with this question right now.  How can you find the path to green that doesn’t cause you to bleed red?

The path begins with understanding what greenness mean to you.  Why are you becoming a green organization?  What are the areas of the green agenda that map to your type of business?  Do you consume or produce toxic materials in your current production methods?  Does your product have a poor profile with respect to reuse or disposability?  Is your product over packaged?  Are you contributing to the growing food versus fuel crisis?  Of what other environmental transgressions is your organization guilty?

Once you have identify the specific opportunities to improve your eco-friendly posture, this is where the power of sustainable innovation best practice can help you navigate through the shoals of poor return on investment and find your way to the deep waters of value driving innovation.  Do you need to find a suitable replacement for CFCs?  Is development of biofuel technology on the agenda?  Do you simply want to find a way to reduce the amount of packaging you use but improve the protective properties of your products packaging?

Whatever the issue, the proper application of innovation practices and tools will lead you quickly to the right solution that meets both your green goals and your business needs.

Barriers to Building a High Performance Innovation Culture

Based on the results of our last informal innovation survey, it seems that how to build a healthy innovation culture that supports sustainable innovation and drives corporate value is a question worthy of discussion.  I’d like to begin that discussion with some comments on what factors often get in the way of building a strong innovation culture.

There are of course many roadblocks in the way of any large cultural change, but in my conversations with people that have innovation or product delivery responsibility in various Global 2000 firms, there are a few that show up consistently.  The top four innovation culture inhibitors are: insufficient enfranchisement, institution inertia, lack of executive support, and lack of investment.  Here is what I mean by each of these items.

Insufficient Enfranchisement
This is a very important but sometimes difficult to diagnose malady.  It can be hard to spot because it doesn’t necessarily manifest itself as overt resistance to cultural change.  Rather, individuals don’t feel connected to the organizational goal, and thus don’t pursue the goal with the desired alacrity.  In the nascent stages of building a new culture, this can be an initiative killer.  This is why any program to build a strong and sustainable innovation culture must consider how to strongly enfranchise all constituencies.

Institutional Inertia
We have all heard the expression “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”  This maxim is anathema to anyone trying to build an innovation culture.  Organizations have many systems in place.  These systems are usually deeply rooted, and from the perspective of current practitioners, they are not broken at all.  Yet, these same systems often stand in the way of the new order because they do not embrace the demands of the new objectives of sustainable innovation.

Lack of Executive Support
Here is a great paradox of innovation.  We consistently see innovation at or near the top of the C-exec agenda.  Yet time and time again, we hear from innovation workers that they don’t feel the support of management.  How can this be?  The answer can be one of many situations.  Here are a few of them.

• It is felt that innovation is this messy thing that can be managed.  So, managers resort to a “if you ask for it, it will happen” style of innovation promotion.  Of course, this rarely works.


• Management delegates the responsibility for establishing an innovation culture to someone else.  This approach is doomed to fail.  You can delegate the authority to drive the innovation culture, but you must not delegate the responsibility.  Only when top management takes ownership can such efforts achieve true success.


• It is felt that adoption of innovation practices and building a strong culture must come from grass root demand.  Unfortunately, if the on-the-ground innovation worker doesn’t feel that management is truly behind the innovation initiative, the groundswell rarely materializes.

Lack of Investment
Establishing a new culture takes both diligence and investment.   Whether it is investment of people, time, or treasure, the initiative cannot success if it is starved of resources.

It is easy to see that all of these issues can hamper the establishment of an innovation culture.  Are these the issues you have seen?  What others are in your way?

Front End of Innovation – Boston

I was just looking over my calendar and just noticed that the Annual PDMA Front End of Innovation Conference is just a little over a month away.  This is always an interesting conference with terrific presentations by industry practitioners.  This year, the event is being held May 19 – 21 at the Boston World Trade Center.

Let me know if you are planning on going.  It would be great to see you there.

Innovation Challenges – What Do Your Votes Say?

Now that our first informal innovation poll has closed, what do the results say?  A few interesting things can be seen in the results.  First, here are the raw results in response to the question, “What do you find is the hardest innovation challenge?”

The message is pretty clear.  The hard work of building a sustainable innovation culture is by far what you find the most difficult of innovation challenges.

There is quite a lot to be said on this topic, and I think we could have some very interesting dialog around this topic.  So, this will be the main topic here for the next couple of weeks.  I hope you’ll all join in and contribute to I think will be a most interest thread of posts.

I hope you’ll also take a look at the next innovation poll too.  This time the question is around what sources of innovation ideas you find most valuable.

Opinion Polls & Market Research

Field Notes – April 2008

I have been missing blogging and hearing from my friends in the blogosphere.  As sometimes happens, I was sidetracked by work urgencies.  What seemed particularly fitting is that will the recent posts and articles I have written talking about the need drive innovation harder in uncertain economic times, addressing that issue is exactly what has kept me tied up for the past two weeks.

Like many companies, we are looking at what the US and global economic climate means to us.  I am glad to say that true to the thematic statements I have written about here, we are not making the mistake of hunkering down and leaving innovation to the other guy.  Rather, I have just spent the past two weeks looking at how to tune our innovation strategy to drive more innovation, faster.

I hope you are all doing the same.  Challenging times are always rife with opportunity.  Don’t run from the challenges, take advantage of the moment and embrace the opportunity.