Driving innovation (which is becoming an overused word for me) is more than:
– saying the word like a mantra – I remember being in a talk where Carly Fiorina said innovative so many times that I stopped believing it. Mantras are good for concentration, but not for magic.
– saying you will be more like an Internet company. If Internet is 3-guys, a pizza, and three months, don’t turn it into 10+ guys and even more contractors, multi-million dollars and 9 months. It’s not the same.
– than a bunch of guys doing grass-roots efforts and skunkworks. At some point, some real money and real structural changes have to be made, and for that, you need the big dudes holding the structure and money in place.
– is not something any company can do. You need to go beyond talking the talk, because you understand it academically very well. You need to know it in your bones – and that requires fundamental changes in personality, expectations, and, for want of a better word, culture.
I like reading Innoblog (from the folks who work with Clayton Christensen – the man you brought all a kernel of doubt amid success with ‘Innovator’s Dilemma’) to keep my finger on the pulse of thinking in this space. Another decent site is BusinessWeek’s site on design.
Link: A ‘Culture of Innovation’: Separating Myths from Truths – Innoblog.
Much of this conventional thinking about a culture of innovation is deeply misguided. Establishing a replicable innovation process takes a lot more than redesigning your workplace and embracing flip-flops. Culture is fundamentally a lagging variable: It is the result of a set of decisions about strategy, structure, people, and processes. Starting a transformation by focusing on culture is like selling a failing car by changing the brand. A brand is the result—not the cause—of a set of correct design, strategy, marketing, and other organizational decisions.
