So I’m hearing lots of people these days talk about the need for organizations to innovate. It’s on everyone’s lips. Innovation is the medicine for whatever ails you.
And Rebels at Work, of course, are all about Innovation. We often define ourselves in the context of what we want to change.
But as the term Innovation has become ever more popular, it has begun to sound funny to me, nonsensical. The way any word will lose meaning if you just say it over and over again.
And so these are my questions to those who speak of Innovation: Exactly what is Innovation? and, What are you trying to Innovate? Are all new things innovative? Do we have to innovate everything we do?
If you dismount from the Innovation Bandwagon, I think you’ll realize that Innovation in and of itself doesn’t solve anything. Coming up with a new idea may or may not solve a problem you have or advance your organization’s mission or make something better. The issue is not so much whether you are innovative as it is whether you are thoughtful about what you’re doing.
Innovation is not, let’s say, like process re-engineering or Lean Six Sigma. It’s not a series of steps that lead to a magical outcome. It’s not a board game.
Innovation is one possible outcome of being thoughtful about what you and your organization do.
Instead of talking about Innovation, let’s unpack the term and have different conversations around these questions, all of which ask us to think about what we do.
- How do we know when it’s time to refresh our processes and doctrine?
- Do we have a process to help us determine when we need to change something? Who’s involved in that process? Anyone?
- What are the habits of my organization? I think perhaps one useful definition of Innovation is “the opposite of habit.”
- How easy is it for individuals in my organization to experiment with something new? Is it much, much easier to just keep doing what we’ve always done? Do individuals in the organization have to be courageous super-hero’s to experiment?
With innovation on my mind, I was drawn to this blog post. I love the notion of innovation as the opposite of habits and whether or not there are spaces within an organization for people to break out of existing habits or processes – it is only then when we can point to whether innovation is happening or happened.
I’m a huge proponent of experimentation – perhaps much to the dismay of some of my colleagues who need to remind me of the framework within which we must operate – the legal, risk and other rules all organizations have – within that space – within that framework, where can we kick over the traces?
Carmen,
Innovation can be a board game if you are in the position to elaborate insight. Innovation is not about “a process” or “experimenting” or just “being thoughtful”, innovation (and the insight behind it) can be elaborated, just look at Amazon, a company that competes with Apple, Google, Walmart, Target, Best Buy, Rackspace, Groupon, Borders, …. Jeff is not just “lucky”. He is playing a strategic game [1].
IMHO, the reason why today we think that it is an “innovation” problem, is not so much that we need more innovation, we have plenty. It is about the kinds of innovation we target. I explained here [2] that we are transitioning to a new paradigm in innovation from product oriented up to the early 80s, to service oriented, up until now, to an “activity oriented” model. In the 70s we were buying products, like a car, in the 80s we started to buy services (leasing a car), today we “zip” cars, i.e. businesses need to integrate with the activities of their customers, not offer some generic services or products.
So, the problem we are facing is that innovation does not deliver enough (perceived) value because it is not aligned with the activities people are trying to do. Once we will change the focus, innovation will be the solution again, as it has always been. Maybe the difference is that we have to be much more insightful, like Amazon, about the kinds of innovation we pursue. This is where collective intelligence, insight and communication bring all their value.
[1] http://www.b-mc2.com/2012/10/20/economies-of-variety/
[2] http://www.b-mc2.com/2013/02/03/revisiting-the-conway-law/