A quick recap for those on part one – Innovation’s death was questioned
and challenged we put a view out there that people needed to look elsewhere for
results. In unpacking the challenge we felt the noise was more about the trendy
catch-phrases, excuses and fluffy titles had distracted people from the reality
of the hard yards of Innovation to bring the idea to life and making it happen.
The lens is different,
long live Innovation
For the bravehearts and renegades. I paraphrase it’s not a matter of doing the same stuff it’s a matter of
doing it differently, it is about seeing things through different vision through
another lens. Like all industries the innovation development space has changed
and will continue to change. New themes are emerging, learnings are being
applied and crowded industry landscapes are being consolidated. The focus of corporate innovation is
moving towards
nimbleness, partnering with unlikely disruptors and practical back-end
implementation, amongst other things.
According to a recent research publication released by
Gartner, “The Practises that Deliver the
Biggest Bang for your Bimodal Buck” - 5 key practises are consistently delivering the highest
improvement in digital performance. They
are also, interestingly, the least adopted. It’s by no means a new message and
according to Gartner signifies the pervasive ability of organisations to factor
in and execute it. In other words, to make it work. This 2016 CIO survey found
that the highest correlation to improved digital performance are driven by the
key practices of:
·
Crowdsourcing
·
Differentiated
funding
·
Differentiated
metrics
·
Working
with start-ups and
·
Innovation
management
Each of these is not new in themselves, but they are not
commonly used across organisations and most probably will be new to you. The practices have certainly provided
business benefits to their champions. The opportunity for Innovation remains on
the field with everything to play for.
The big guns are
calling it out, then and now.
Back in 1997 American business writer Tom Peter coined the
famous phase Innovate or die. It was true then and rings even more true
now. Adam Trisk, Co-founder and Chief Strategy
Officer of Skylabs calls this out in his article published by Inc, a premier
print publication for entrepreneurs, pioneers and business owners, what happens when companies stop
thinking about the future. Being a follower is a perfectly
good strategy and one that makes a lot of sense when disruption is forcing an
organisation to focus on keeping a sinking boat afloat. But sooner or later it will
beg the question for change, for bravery and thinking about the future. These aren't isolated cases as Steven Denning
backs this up, in his Forbes article Why U.S. Firms Are Dying: Failure To
Innovate, he writes about a looming innovation crisis at organisations. The
message is clear, “in a world in which power in the marketplace has shifted to
customers and customers insist on “better, cheaper, faster, smaller, more
convenient and more personalized,” failure to give priority to innovation is an
organisational death warrant”.
Innovation the reality
check – those hard yards and making it happen.
We can continue with the “innovational smoke and mirrors”,
proclaiming innovation to be about glamour, glitz and unattainable new
technologies and advancements only stumbled upon by the few. Organisations,
individuals and consultants alike can act and market as if they were endowed
with a special ability to do magic, to predict the future and manage it, doing
nothing more but talk and pay marketing bills. Truth is, smoke has a tendency
to lift, mirrors are known to reflect reality. We should all be prepared to
face the truth when it happens, to answer and take responsibility. Innovation is not to blame, it is not the
root cause of the lack of apparent results.
We can call it innovation or not, remove it from our business
language, job titles and processes and remember it as a fad, - or not. We can
also decide to blame it on our own inactions and lack of leadership, citing the
“worlds dumbest idea” – maximisation of shareholder value
as reason. We can point at people, infrastructure, metrics, technology, budgets
and other stuff too if we want.
The kingdom and the
fairy tale is for us to create
The future is for us to create. For us to do something
courageous to get there and to drive it to deliver results. To take
responsibility for victory, but it is not about putting innovation on trial.
So coming back to our
story in part one, in the end the warrior poets and soldiers found a new way to
manufacture even cooler, more effective weapons and Innovation won the day.
Jointly written with Henra Mayer
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