Does the word "Innovation" mean anything?
(Scott) This is something that has been eating at me for a while... is there value left in the term "innovation"? You can find the word innovation in just about every Fortune 500 mission statement, website, CEO interview, etc out there these days. Companies and people tout their breakthrough innovations... but often these "innovations" involve squeezing an extra cup-holder into a minivan or adding a "cheeseburger" flavor to a line of potato chips. I'm sorry, but my own bar for innovation is higher than that. To me, an innovation is something that fundamentally changes human behavior. Cupholders and cheeseburger chips fall short of that line.
And because "innovation" is used to describe products and services and processes with such little incremental value... does the term even mean anything anymore? Should we start talking about degrees of innovation in order to ascribe proper merit to the ideas that are truly innovative? Like Darwinnovation... a new product or service that is the "fittest" and sure to change the evolution of a category, vs. Spinnovation... a crappy new product with a huge marketing push that is spun as revolutionary?
How do you define innovation? How do we as a society misuse the word? How should it be used?
And because "innovation" is used to describe products and services and processes with such little incremental value... does the term even mean anything anymore? Should we start talking about degrees of innovation in order to ascribe proper merit to the ideas that are truly innovative? Like Darwinnovation... a new product or service that is the "fittest" and sure to change the evolution of a category, vs. Spinnovation... a crappy new product with a huge marketing push that is spun as revolutionary?
How do you define innovation? How do we as a society misuse the word? How should it be used?
posted by ROInnovation at 12:28 PM
3 Comments:
Scott, from the attendees and discussions at the conference, I think that people really are starting to realise that, (in theory at least), innovation is not about cost cutting, rationalisation or efficiency of current resources (which is where businesses and CEOs seem to have made their money in the last 10 years). The new competitors andtechnologies are already lean, fast, mean - and that's why these guys are freaking out, there's nothing left to cut.
There are 2 options for the encumbents - start a new business model completely (which requires innovation of the entire company structure) or develop the next new breakthrough innovation (which may lead to a new business model anyway). And the only way to do these 2 things is by fostering innoative cultures within companies - at all levels.
Basically we need to move away from supervisory management into management that nurtures and fosters new ideas in their creation , but also in their development and evolution. It's no good having ideation sessions if the company culture is unable to deal with the risky, challenging, new ideas that emerge from them.
And this requires an acceptance of risks, longer terms development, more time for all employees to be inspired, create and evolve really new ideas.
The companies that don't see this are already in trouble.
From your own experience, or from your learning at the conference... how do we begin to introduce innovation to a company culture when supervisory / status quo management is in place?
How are companies setting employee objectives to encourage innovation? I ask because at my employer we all set "commitments". If you don't make your commitments, it's unlikely you'll get much of a raise / bonus / promotion. So, people naturally dial back their ambitions a bit, and make more conservative decisions.
What specific steps must be taken to move towards a more idealistically innovative workplace?
Hi Scott
I'm not sure what the answer is, but I'm setting up a prgramme next year which will attempt to do all those things - I will be running an innovation behaviours programme with training, secondments, etc for senior managers here. I also have secondments to my team who will learn what we do and go back and do it in their departments.
When I've designed it and piloted it I will let you know how it was done! We will be working with the London Business School on this programme and gary Hamel, so I'll no doubt learn a lot myself.
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