Sitting in the airport isn’t the way I like to enjoy San Francisco, but as I wait for the plane that is to take me back to Boston after a few days in California, I have plenty of time to reflect on the past three days. So far this week, I have visited with four multi-billion dollar manufacturers across three distinct industry segments, talked with dozens of people about sustainable innovation practice, and presented at PTCuser World Event 2008. Here are a few observations from some of the discussions of the past few days.
Even organizations that are highly committed to building innovation competence can get derailed by changes in circumstance. In one organization, ownership of the innovation agenda was moved from an R&D focused functional group to a reliability focused group. The consequences of this move were quite predictable. The innovation agenda suffered, and momentum was lost. This was a major setback for the company’s innovation objectives.
In another organization, the responsibility for driving innovation fell into the IT group. This too led to a problem. While the IT group wants to help build the organization’s innovation capability, there isn’t a sense of urgency to deliver results. I believe that is because the IT group didn’t have line of sight responsibility for delivery of innovation outcomes.
The lesson to glean from these examples is that it is important to make sure that the organization responsible for innovation is one that has goals which are aligned with your innovation goals. Fortunately for the first company, responsibility for the innovation initiative has moved back to an R&D focused group. So, it looks like momentum can be recaptured.
Comments