5myths of innovation

8/2/2019 5myths of Innovation

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The five myths of innovation

Julian Birkinshaw, Cyril Bouquet and J.-L. Barsoux


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innovation used to be the preserve of a select band of employees be they

designers, engineers or scientists whose responsibility it was to generate

and pursue new ideas, often in a separate location. But increasingly,

innovation has come to be seen as the responsibility of the entire

organization.

Making innovation everyone's job is intuitively appealing but very hard to

achieve. Employees face capacity, time and motivation issues around their

participation.


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Myth No. 1: The Eureka Moment

For many people, it is still the sudden flash of

insight think Archimedes in his bath or Newton

beneath the apple tree that defines the process of

innovation.

The truth is far more prosaic. It is often said thatinnovation is 5% inspiration and 95% perspiration

Most innovation efforts fail not because of a lack

of bright ideas but because of a lack of careful and

thoughtful follow-up. Smart companies knowwhere the weakest links in their entire innovation

value chain are, and they invest time in correcting

those weaknesses rather than further reinforcing

their strengths.


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Myth No. 2: Build It and They Will Come The emergence of second-generation

Internet technologies has had a dramatic

impact on how we share, aggregate andinterpret information.

The proliferation and growth of onlinecommunities such as Facebook andLinkedIn seduce us into assuming thatthese new means of social interaction will

also transform the way we get thingsdone at work.

Online forums are not a panacea fordistributed innovation. Online forums aregood for capturing and filtering largenumbers of existing ideas; in-person

forums are good for generating andbuilding on new ideas. Smart companiesare selective in their use of online forumsfor innovation.


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Myth No. 3. Pay Is Paramount

A dominant concern when organizations setout to grow their innovation capabilities ishow to structure rewards for ideas. Acommon refrain is that innovation involvesdiscretionary effort on top of existing

responsibilities, so we have to offerincentives in order for people to put in thatextra effort.

Rewarding people for their innovationefforts misses the point. The process of

innovating of taking the initiative to comeup with new solutions is its own reward.Smart companies emphasize the social andpersonal drivers of discretionary effort,rather than the material drivers.


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Myth No. 4: Open Innovation Is the

Future

Any discussion of innovation in largecompanies sooner or later turns to theissue of "open" innovation--the ideathat companies should look for ways oftapping into and harnessing the ideas

that lie beyond their formal boundaries.

External innovation forums have accessto a broad range of expertise thatmakes them effective for solving narrow

technological problems; internalinnovation forums have less breadth butmore understanding of context. Smartcompanies use their external andinternal experts for very different typesof problems.


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Myth No. 5. Bottom-Up Innovation Is

Best

There is a lot of enthusiasm among thosewriting about innovation, and among thoseworking in R&D settings, for bottom-up activismor "entrepreneurship." The reasoning here isstraightforward: Top executives are not closeenough to the action to be able to come upwith or implement new ideas, so they need topush responsibility for innovation down into theorganization.

Bottom-up innovation efforts benefit from highlevels of employee engagement; top-downinnovation efforts benefit from direct alignmentwith the company's goals. Smart companies useboth approaches and are adept at helpingbottom-up innovation projects get thesponsorship they need to survive.


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Online tools, open innovation

communities and bigcollaborative forums all have

their limitations. None isalways right or always wrong.

The best approach involvescareful judgment and a deep

understanding of the particular

challenges a company is facing.

By thinking through the prosand cons of each element,

companies can manage their

processes better.

5myths of innovation

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