There once was a
management fad called Innovation. It was beautiful and popular and had a
certain mystique, maybe magic about it. It attributed certain revolutionary
businessmen and women with the Midas touch and was the reason some pretty cool,
new baby starlets were born. It certainly got a lot of dinosaurs out of their
dark caves of irrelevance and ignited new fire into some old, weary dragons. It
was almost like a warrior poet, called upon to save those in danger.
Then one day Innovation
went too far. Expected too much. Innovation wanted people to create their own stories
too. It became more and more difficult
to sustain the happily ever afters - because according to the Kingdom, that was
not the deal. The dinosaurs longed for their familiar caves, the knights blamed
innovation for their injuries at war as their new weaponry were not delivering
its promised deadly blows and the people of the Kingdom, well they eventually
grew tired of the rock stars’ same old, noisy hits accompanied by the usual
marketing gimmicks and smoke and mirrors. And so the story became endangered.
It received a price on its head. Accusations were thrown. Innovation was
blamed, gossiped about and eventually captured. The kingdom arranged a huge fest
to give it a fitting farewell. Eulogies were recited, the “Eureka” moments
remembered and many soldiers gathered around the round table were huge battle
losses were mourned. All agreed, the magic was gone, the battlefield littered
and the reality of survival far too pressing to waste any more time on
Innovation.
Logic, experience and
sanity needed to prevail. The musketeers were sent with word to gather the
legal wizards and formulate a defence against the die-hard mutineers.
Innovation was put on trial once again.
Get to the heart of it
So here we are – trying to make sense of the arguments by
industry experts and respected research publications that we came to trust on
the matter. Are we for or against innovation as the industry that we are
passionate about, believe in and spent countless hours on building and
supporting, is professed to be dying? It has become littered with corpses and
phrases that we cannot stomach anymore – like endless write-ups on the “over-use
“of the word and deliberate efforts to ban any term innovation related from
general business language. It accuses of the fuzziness of innovation output,
the strategic difficulty of its execution, the inherent risk, the ever
increasing almost spinning speed of change and the sheer hopeless,
uncontrollable reality of it all.
Soldiers take
responsibility for victory
As a team that has dedicated more than 20 passionate years to
the subject matter we feel like warriors. We fight with weaponry that has not
delivered the deadly blow, but we know winning is worth fighting for and that
it requires taking responsibility for the victory sought. This may make us
biased on the topic, as you cannot work in an industry for this amount of time
if you do not passionately believe in its ability to deliver.
As soldiers in the industry, this is part one of our
observation of the innovation battlefield as we run to the frontline, ready to
take responsibility for creating the future of economic growth, sustainability
and business longevity, alongside other like-minded bravehearts.
Innovation is dead
Much has been said about innovation as a management
discipline lying on its death bed. Strong opinions and lauded experts are
taking turns to point out the challenges with innovation and advise people to
look elsewhere for results. One such opinion piece was recently published by one of our
learned friends. One cannot be in the
industry and not view many of the arguments made as valid. We have lived it,
seen it and have been frustrated by it. There is truth in many statements.
About organisations talking the talk but not walking the walk, damage done by
me-too, unimaginative fly-by-nights and (respected large consulting houses) –
proclaiming expertise and weaving innovation magic wands while making
unrealistic promises. Add to this overworked and uninterested employees who
cannot handle another item on the to-do list and the throwing around of trendy
terms and job titles by managers who hope they can turn a blind eye and don’t
have to take responsibility for owning it. Luckily, through it all leadership
is busy with more pressing issues, like organisational survival.
The battle in making it
happen
Innovation is not about trendy catch-phrases or excuses, it’s
about making it happen. Committing to the hard yards, and making sure that you
have left nothing on the field. We believe - and judging from what we have seen
from renegade entrepreneurs - that it is about 3 things that cannot be
separated. The elements of the new, implementation and delivering value –
whatever that value means in your context. Innovation is not only about
creativity or the process in isolation. It’s about a lot more, like teams and
ROI and business cases, about supportive software and results. Steve Jobs defined it once as
creativity that ships.
Some have described Innovation Management Systems (IMS’s) as
being a systematic gatherer of silly ideas that still gets ignored by
management. Maybe we are not brave enough, courageous enough or maybe stability
in economic downturns trumps planning for the future. Maybe we became
irrelevant to the innovation industry. Can it be that short term gains are
still the only lens justifying our work output and that we are too risk averse,
reputation proud and overall, too scared to live a life that holds more promise
by being part of something great? Or is this perhaps the other challenge with
innovation. We talk too much. We are doing it wrong. Are we over complicating innovation
instead of just getting on with it?
Innovation Live
All the great stories of history have many chapters and for
the bravehearts and renegades amongst you look out for Innovation’s rebirth in
the next post, Part 2 of the story, Innovation is dead, long live innovation. We
have a view on that!
Jointly written with Henra Mayer
