You’re Doing Innovation Wrong
18 May, 2015 / Articles
We’re living in a time of unprecedented change. Every week, some new astonishment fills our news feed—whether it’s autonomous vehicles prowling the suburbs or a computer writing a cookbook. Social media posts gasp over companies such as Uber and Airbnb hurtling to deca-billion dollar valuations, unburdened by the physical assets they broker and sell. We’re getting serious, as a species, about making a trip to Mars. It’s a grand time to be alive on our little rock.
In the face of such dynamism, executives often see what’s needed as a cultural shift. “We need a culture of innovation!” and all heads nod—who could possibly argue the opposite choice? And in a time of fundamental change, building an institutional ability to see and seize change is indeed a valuable and beautiful thing. The problem, though, is that framing innovation as a cultural issue typically leads us to focus on its trappings and trimmings instead of its substance.
So we look for hip loft space, or at least some cool furniture for our “innovation lab,” because we couldn’t possibly innovate in a traditional conference room. We stock these workspaces with tablets, smart screens, sticky notes and Sharpies because we see innovative people using them. We make sure there are lots of toys and snacks around. We let our employees start wearing jeans, if we didn’t previously, because, well, who can possibly innovate in pressed slacks?
Innovation is a discipline
One of the most pernicious myths in innovation is that it is fundamentally a challenge of creativity. If we can only help our people be more creative, then the innovation will flow. Framed this way, innovation becomes an attribute. It becomes something innate and phenomenological. We can only set the right conditions (cue the loft space, denim and other ritual objects) and hope it happens. This is when we start calling for that “culture” of innovation.
Instead, if we frame innovation as a challenge of discipline—of learning to use the right methods, tools and approaches at the right times—then we quickly focus on very different imperatives:
We become students of innovation: We don’t expect someone without training to build a discounted cash flow model or develop a marketing segmentation. Nor would we expect someone new to an industry to already understand its structure and dynamics. So why do we expect our colleagues and leaders to suddenly manifest an ability to innovate? And why don’t we expect them to study innovation systematically—both the methods they should apply in different contexts (e.g., when to use lean and agile methods vs. design methods) as well as meaningful innovations in the surrounding landscape (e.g., what can we learn from companies like Uber)? Like any other business function or discipline, innovation has tradecraft that we can learn, practice and hone.
We measure methods and results: When we start seeing innovation as a discipline, then we also start focusing on what works and what doesn’t—and we set goals and measure results. This doesn’t mean we start asking for a 5-year financial projection two weeks into an initiative. It does mean paying attention to which inputs yield better outputs; did our time spent brainstorming in a room yield better ideas (doubtful), or did spending the same time studying our customers? We start reviewing our efforts, spotting where we made critical breakthroughs and where we missed key insights. This should be the point of “celebrating failure,” which, if we’re honest, is a silly thing to celebrate for its own virtue. We make sure we salvage all possible learning, and see how it can improve both our current business and our innovation capabilities. We also look across the range of innovation initiatives underway, and ask if they’re collectively addressing the right issues. Do they have the right balance of risk and likely return, and are we dedicating enough resources (time, money and people) to them?
We make innovation obligatory rather than optional: Finally, if we can see innovation as a discipline, then we can start demanding it from our organization. We can hold our team and business unit leaders accountable for sponsoring innovation initiatives, and charge our bright, high potential employees with developing. Some of the most powerful innovators in history, ranging from GE to Honda to Google, have connected involvement in innovation initiatives to career development, incentives and promotion—because innovation is what they expect from their future leaders. Innovation also becomes an investment that we start funding programmatically, instead of scraping budget dollars together each quarter, because it’s vital to the ongoing health and success of our business. We stop hoping innovation will happen and start requiring it from each other and ourselves.
Drive innovation as a discipline for a few quarters and you’ll feel a different energy in the halls—a buzz and new sense of possibility. Your employees will likely start to think and work differently. It may even feel like a cultural shift. But I promise you won’t worry about whether you should wear jeans.
SOURCEWe’re living in a time of unprecedented change. Every week, some new astonishment fills our news feed—whether it’s autonomous vehicles prowling the suburbs or a computer writing a cookbook. Social media posts gasp over companies such as Uber and Airbnb hurtling to deca-billion dollar valuations, unburdened by the physical assets they broker and sell. We’re getting serious, as a species, about making a trip to Mars. It’s a grand time to be alive on our little rock.
In the face of such dynamism, executives often see what’s needed as a cultural shift. “We need a culture of innovation!” and all heads nod—who could possibly argue the opposite choice? And in a time of fundamental change, building an institutional ability to see and seize change is indeed a valuable and beautiful thing. The problem, though, is that framing innovation as a cultural issue typically leads us to focus on its trappings and trimmings instead of its substance.
So we look for hip loft space, or at least some cool furniture for our “innovation lab,” because we couldn’t possibly innovate in a traditional conference room. We stock these workspaces with tablets, smart screens, sticky notes and Sharpies because we see innovative people using them. We make sure there are lots of toys and snacks around. We let our employees start wearing jeans, if we didn’t previously, because, well, who can possibly innovate in pressed slacks?
Innovation is a discipline
One of the most pernicious myths in innovation is that it is fundamentally a challenge of creativity. If we can only help our people be more creative, then the innovation will flow. Framed this way, innovation becomes an attribute. It becomes something innate and phenomenological. We can only set the right conditions (cue the loft space, denim and other ritual objects) and hope it happens. This is when we start calling for that “culture” of innovation.
Instead, if we frame innovation as a challenge of discipline—of learning to use the right methods, tools and approaches at the right times—then we quickly focus on very different imperatives:
We become students of innovation: We don’t expect someone without training to build a discounted cash flow model or develop a marketing segmentation. Nor would we expect someone new to an industry to already understand its structure and dynamics. So why do we expect our colleagues and leaders to suddenly manifest an ability to innovate? And why don’t we expect them to study innovation systematically—both the methods they should apply in different contexts (e.g., when to use lean and agile methods vs. design methods) as well as meaningful innovations in the surrounding landscape (e.g., what can we learn from companies like Uber)? Like any other business function or discipline, innovation has tradecraft that we can learn, practice and hone.
We measure methods and results: When we start seeing innovation as a discipline, then we also start focusing on what works and what doesn’t—and we set goals and measure results. This doesn’t mean we start asking for a 5-year financial projection two weeks into an initiative. It does mean paying attention to which inputs yield better outputs; did our time spent brainstorming in a room yield better ideas (doubtful), or did spending the same time studying our customers? We start reviewing our efforts, spotting where we made critical breakthroughs and where we missed key insights. This should be the point of “celebrating failure,” which, if we’re honest, is a silly thing to celebrate for its own virtue. We make sure we salvage all possible learning, and see how it can improve both our current business and our innovation capabilities. We also look across the range of innovation initiatives underway, and ask if they’re collectively addressing the right issues. Do they have the right balance of risk and likely return, and are we dedicating enough resources (time, money and people) to them?
We make innovation obligatory rather than optional: Finally, if we can see innovation as a discipline, then we can start demanding it from our organization. We can hold our team and business unit leaders accountable for sponsoring innovation initiatives, and charge our bright, high potential employees with developing. Some of the most powerful innovators in history, ranging from GE to Honda to Google, have connected involvement in innovation initiatives to career development, incentives and promotion—because innovation is what they expect from their future leaders. Innovation also becomes an investment that we start funding programmatically, instead of scraping budget dollars together each quarter, because it’s vital to the ongoing health and success of our business. We stop hoping innovation will happen and start requiring it from each other and ourselves.
Drive innovation as a discipline for a few quarters and you’ll feel a different energy in the halls—a buzz and new sense of possibility. Your employees will likely start to think and work differently. It may even feel like a cultural shift. But I promise you won’t worry about whether you should wear jeans.
