Over on Innovation in Practice, Drew Boyd comments on the stigma associated with innovation that deters executive from investing. Drew goes on to say that the innovation industry is somewhat to blame for this because it has conspired to keep innovation shrouded in a cloak of mystery.
To some extent, this is true. I remember sitting in the audience a few years back at TRIZCON when, during a panel discussion on how to expand the reach of TRIZ, the distinguished Toru Nakagawa suggested that the teaching of TRIZ needed to be simplified to lower the barrier of entry for practitioners. There was nothing shocking about the suggestion, but what happened next was stunning. Larry Smith, formerly President of the Altschuller Institute, scolded Toru and asserted that since it had been difficult for him to learn TRIZ, it should be difficult for others as well.
But the real source of executive uncertainty when it comes to innovation is simply that most companies are still stuck in the hopeless cycle of accidental innovation. As a result, they see very poor, often negative, returns on the investments in innovation. This is further exacerbated by the fact that there are innovation companies out there peddling ideation snake oil. So, company’s bad experiences with these innovation charlatans further taint their view on the value of innovation.
Yet, we see so many examples of innovation driving business growth and success. I have been enjoying reading A. G. Lafley’s account of how P&G made innovation central to their “consumer is boss” ethos. This focus on innovation was instrumental to turning around P&G as Lafley took them from being a tired, lackluster company to being the world beater that they are now.
The truth is that disciplined, sustainable innovation practice really works. It drives corporate value and is one the most important core competencies that a company can develop. Innovation practice is not about fuzzy games to tease new thoughts out of people though. It is about learning the specific techniques of framing your challenges in the right way and then applying proven problem solving methods to unwind the challenges.
Don’t be fooled by the think that you can fuel you innovation program with ideation snake oil. Do invest in building a strong and integrated sustainable innovation program. In the end, you will find it is easier than you think, and the rewards are far greater that you imagine.
Innovation Infrastructure
This is installment four in my series on building a sustainable innovation culture. In installment one, I outlined the Five Pillars of Sustainable Innovation Culture. Installment two examined Executive Leadership, the first pillar. Installment three considered Innovation Skill Development. Now, I’d like to look at an all too often neglected aspect of innovation deployment—the infrastructure to enable innovation success.
Why is infrastructure neglected? I see three factors that contribute to this.
Factor #1 - The myth of innovation genius
It seems that this myth is so engrained in our popular culture that it is a strong and silent impediment to building a true innovation culture. Just last week in a discussion with Gartner analyst Carol Rozwell, she raised the issue as something she also sees, calling it the Edison Effect. (We shared a laugh over this name as Edison is the poster boy for innovation by dint of effort.)
The reality of innovation is that innovation is a process that takes time to mature. It is an integrative process that yields results with information is viewed and combined in new ways. It is also a process that can be learned and mastered. Until managers understand this, they tend to get trapped into thinking, “I pay my people lots of money to solve my business challenges; they should just go off and innovate already.”
But talented people still need tools to work. It wouldn’t make you feel very sanguine to hear a nurse say as you were being wheeled into the operating room, “Dr. Kutemup gets paid a boat load of money, so the hospital doesn’t see any need to waste money on frivolous items like equipment or anesthesia.” Just like the surgeon, your knowledge workers need the right tools. They need tools to provide a repeatable, structured framework for the execution of innovation best practices, and they need the information infrastructure to provide them with efficient and purposeful solution concept sourcing.
Factor #2 - Lack of awareness that infrastructure and tools exist to help support repeatable innovation
Once managers get past factor #1, they often find themselves at a loss. They understand that they need to invest in infrastructure, but they don’t know what to do about it. The fact is they usual don’t know that tools exist to help address the sustainable innovation challenge. They flounder looking at product development and quality processes such as Stage Gate or Six Sigma to provide the roadmap. But these processes don’t address the key issue of how to repeatable identify the best and innovative solution to the challenges facing the business. These processes only provide a backdrop against which the innovation strategy will unfold.
Finally in desperation, the hapless manager turns over the search for innovation infrastructure to the IT department. Shortly after this, the business runs afoul of factor #3.
Factor #3 - Traditional bastions of IT feel threatened by innovation technology
IT departments are generally not equipped to understand or evaluate innovation platforms. (It is for this reason that some would say that IT stands for Innovation Termination.) As a result, most IT departments quickly reframe the search for innovation infrastructure as a search or knowledge management initiative.
All to often and just again today, have I sat across the table from someone in charge of a knowledge management initiative and listened to them proudly talk about there beautifully constructed taxonomies, how they have designed their portals around communities of practice, and how easily their knowledge workers will be able to share and collaborate with the new knowledge portal capabilities. These people rarely want to learn that there is a newer and better approach and tend to expend their energy justifying what they already know how to do. All the while, the cries for help from users who are unable to find valuable information asset in the rigid framework fall on deaf ears.
When I hear this sort of prattle, I wonder when people will understand that the old school approach to knowledge management is a failed approach. In the vast majority of organizations, these initiatives have consumed vast resources and produced little in the way of tangible results. Recently, Joe Barkai of Manufacturing Insights hit the nail on the head when he declared that what knowledge workers need is a semantic, design intent based approach to sourcing concepts. People need more than a way to browse available data. They need a way to get their jobs done. They need a way to find the precise information to address their challenge without having to sift through load of irrelevant information to get their. They need a high precision, just in time, concept sourcing environment.
So, if we are ready to move past these three factors and consider serious innovation infrastructure, what should we be looking for? Here are my recommendations.
What would you add to the list?
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