What are you trying to do?

Escape an environmental condition?

Fight some threatening forces?

Make (more) money ?

Find a stellar breakthrough?

What I’d like discuss with you:

• Myths related to innovation as a management practice

• Thoughts and ideas on innovation

Myths surrounding Innovation

1. The case for innovation can be made financially and from theoretical deduction.

2. There is a “clean” solution (a process/a structure/flow) to the challenge of innovation.

3. You get what you pay for, including innovation.

4. There is a (qualitative, manageable) difference between winners and losers.

5. Failure disqualifies an innovation.

Myth 1. The case for innovation

Conversation between an “Innovation Consultant” and an organization who wants to be “more innovative”

Organization : - “We are thinking about making our company more innovative. Can you tell us, however, how we can measure the value innovation creates?”

Consultant: - “Happy to do that. Can you tell me first, please, how you currently measure the value your IT, HR, Legal department, and top management creates annually?”

Organization: -… (They don’t call back.)

Myth 2. There is a “clean” solution

Staff

member(s)

submit an

idea as a

proposal.

Does initial

GC screening

panel accept

proposal?

Does extended

GC panel

accept

proposal?

Proposal is

rejected.

Test and Mature Phase:

Project team addresses

issues raised by

screening panel.

Project is

abandoned

Proposal is

rejected.

Does project

pass through

tollgate

meeting?

Does project

pass through

tollgate

meeting?

Action Lab(s)

Project is

abandoned

Does business

unit want to

commercialize

project?

Project remains

uncommercialized

Project transfers

to business unit.Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

NoNoNoNoNo

Maybe

Myth 3. Pay for innovation

• “If you put too much emphasis on financial rewards, greed takes over.” Leo Roothardt, Shell GameChanger

• “People engage in radical innovation not because they get paid for it, but because they want to.” Gene Meieran, Intel Fellow

• You know The Wright Brothers.

• Do you know Samuel Pierpont Langley ?

Myth 4. You can immediately tell a winner by looking at it

“Many innovators are wrong in 99.99% of cases but when they are right, they are really right.”

The difference between innovative and not-so-innovative people is that the successful ones try more often.

Myth 5. Failure disqualifies

Yes, There are some Bad ideas…

Theory and practice

“The distance between theory and practice is small in theory but large in practice.” (Anonymous)

.

And the answer always is….

How do organizations create value? Essentially…

• By efficient utilization of labor and resources

• By saving on market transactions

• By specializing and taking risks over time

• By sustaining institutions and social structures that make life and work (sometimes) meaningful

• By sustaining complex relationships and investments over time so that innovation can mature

• Any other way you’d like to add…?

Innovation is not enough.

• Innovation as experimentation is relatively well understood.

• Connecting innovation to core business competencies, assets, and infrastructure is not well understood (within many existing organizational contexts).

The Challenge is

GROWTH & R E N E W A L

THE ADAPTIVE CYCLE OF RENEWAL

• Continuous growth requires continuous renewal. It’s the only way to maintain continuity in a discontinuous

world.

And the fuel for renewal is innovation.

Not merely innovation at the margins but:

- deep - strategic innovation

that impacts the core of your business model.

An Innovation Culture First!

1. Is rooted in management communication

2. Is seeking to advance simplicity (this slide is too wordy!)

3. Is theoretically informed, conceptually enlightened and results-oriented with a long term view

4. Is empathetic to would-be innovators

5. Addresses the continuous flux between change, continuity (and more change) in a firm

6. Adds to every employee’s and customer’s understanding of how our firm creates value

Rdy 2 Innov8?

5 really crazy questions 5 really crazy ideas 5 ratings Translation2yourJob

EXER

CIS

E!!!

Oh

Yea

h!!

!