|
|
 |
Innovation Newsletter from OVO
 |
 |
OVO Views
Conversations about Innovation
|
January 2009
- Vol 3, Issue 5
|
|
|
|
In This Issue
|
|
|
|
|
Quick Links
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Greetings!
|
|
A tradition for many presidents is to "get
out of the gate' quickly with a 100 day plan.
Historically, the first 100
days in office has been a time for unveiling
plans and implementing a significant number of
executive orders and legislation. This
enables the president to quickly put his (and
someday soon her) stamp on the new year and
the new administration. If a 100 day plan is
good for the country, why not implement a 100
day plan for innovation for your business?
We'll take a look at what that could
mean.
Strategic intent, communication and
innovation
Next, we'll examine at least one reason some
firms are successful and innovation seems to
come as second nature. Communicating a clear
strategy and strategic intent that
everyone understands makes innovation a lot
more successful, as the risk and uncertainty
of innovation is counterbalanced by clear
direction and objectives.
Why the time is right for innovation
Contrary to what you may believe, this period
of economic slowdown is probably one of the
best times to innovate. Why? Any good idea
that increases revenue or cuts costs will
receive a close look, and your team will be
free of the notion that you'll receive any
funding or resources, which will actually be
liberating. It's time to "Just Do It".
Innovation is "Dead"
We've just been alerted in an article in
BusinessWeek that "Innovation is Dead". We
believe the word had lost its value due to
misuse and obfuscation, but the results and
outcomes innovation promises -
differentiation and organic growth - are
still in strong demand.
We'd like to know your thoughts about the
innovation space. What topics are of most
importance to you? What information can we
provide to help you accomplish your goals?
Please feel free to contact
us as we continue to bring you some of
the best commentary on the innovation space.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Out of the gate
Since Franklin Roosevelt, many incoming
presidents have used their first 100 days in
office to set the tone for their
administration and to get some of their favored
legislation enacted quickly. This helps start
the machinery of government working and
focus it on what is important to the incoming
president. There are already
discussions about Obama's first 100 days, and
for good or for bad history will judge him on
these first 100 days.
100 days is a relatively arbitrary number,
just over three months or one fiscal quarter.
That is not a long time in the span of a
four year presidency, but that timeframe is
critical to
getting started. With that in mind, we
should consider what a firm focused on
innovation could do in 100 days. If it's
good enough for the president, why not kick
start your innovation effort with a 100 day
effort?
Innovation launch in 100 days
If your firm is just starting out to create
an innovation capability, you can accomplish
quite a lot in 100 days. First and most
important is to clearly link innovation to
the firm's strategic goals and themes.
Innovation is an enabler, not a strategy, so
your team needs to identify how innovation
enables or improves key strategic goals.
Next, set some high level metrics and
measurements for innovation - by the end of
100 days we'll have generated X number of
ideas and have Y of them under consideration.
We'll have established an innovation team
and put an innovation process in place. Note
that these measurements or metrics can be
accomplished in the 100 day time frame.
Next, identify three or four key
opportunities or challenges to the business,
at the corporate level or in a business unit,
and start using creative ideation techniques
to generate ideas to create new products,
services and business models. Once those
ideas have been generated, identify a team to
flesh out those ideas, evaluate the ideas and
prioritize the recommendations or solutions.
By the end of 100 days, your team can have a
number of ideas ready for further investigation.
Project versus Capability
Here's the tricky part. Do you intend
innovation to be an occasional, episodic
project that achieves focus in good times or
when new ideas are desperately needed and is
neglected when other factors require more
focus, or do you want to build a continuous
innovation capability? For a 100 day plan,
you can
encourage and drive your teams to focus on
innovation, but they'll revert back to their
"day jobs" once the 100 days is over without
a consistent reinforcement of the importance
of innovation from the top down.
If innovation is to become a competency and
capability, you'll need to incorporate
changes to your culture (becoming more open
to new ideas and risk), your communication
style, how you compensate and reward the
individuals who are actively innovating.
Without these changes, your first 100 day
effort is a project with a discrete beginning
and end, and won't carry over for further
innovation. With these recommended changes,
innovation has a chance to take root and
become a consistent innovation competence.
Accomplish a lot in a short period of
time
The 100 day concept for starting and
launching an innovation program is an
excellent model, because it demonstrates a
desire to move quickly and a well thought out
plan for execution. One of the biggest
challenges to innovation initiatives is the
struggle to overcome the inertia and fear of
risk or failure in a business. With a
clearly mapped 100 day plan, fully backed and
supported by senior executives, the
innovation team can accomplish a significant
amount of work in a relatively short period
of time, but only by leveraging the
investment and urgency of the senior
leadership team. Once the 100 days are
complete, then it will be up to the entire
organization to effectively incorporate the
innovation competency and capability into the
everyday working of the business.
High Stakes
There's a sense of high risk/high reward in
this approach. I'm sure given their choice
most presidents would be happy to have less
emphasis on an arbitrary 100 day schedule,
but we've grown to expect that kind of effort
and focus. If innovation and new organic
growth is important for your organization,
perhaps it is worthy of the same high stakes
effort - a full court press worthy of other
important initiatives. A safe, half-hearted
approach to innovation is almost never
successful - there are simply too many other
demands on a business. Setting a very
specific goal and short time frame and
establishing management backing is one of the
best ways to get started.
Conclusion
Your team can get a lot done in 100 days to
kickstart an innovation program. One big,
integrated effort that's aggressive and high
profile may be just what you need to get your
innovative thinking flowing and impact the
culture. If you need help planning or
executing a 100 day innovation plan, give us
a call. We can show you what we've done for
others in a similar situation.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
One distinguishing difference
Looking at successful firms and trying
to emulate what they do well is a time
honored tradition. After all, most
businesses seek best practices from other
firms and many "benchmark" themselves against
firms they believe perform certain functions
as "best in class". So why not take a moment
to learn one of the best in class attributes
of firms that are excellent innovators?
The best aspect of this attribute is that it
does not require a significant change in
investments, in acquiring new skills or
changing a business model. The fact is, most
successful innovators have a very clearly
defined and stated strategic intent, and
everyone in the company
understand what the strategic intent is and
also understand
how to apply that to their work and their new
ideas.
Clarity of purpose
As we've discussed previously, innovation is
almost always a risky proposition, filled
with change and uncertainty. It's a given
that some ideas will fail. In an environment
where it's difficult to identify the best
ideas and bring them to market, any
assistance the
organization can provide is welcome. In a
firm where there is clear strategic intent -
where the management team has carefully
stated its key strategies and objectives, and
the culture reinforces those factors, it
becomes much easier to identify which ideas
are relatively useful and valuable, and which
ideas don't align to the corporate goals. On
the other hand, in organizations where the
corporate goals and strategies are not well
defined or articulated, it becomes very
difficult to determine where innovation
should be focused, and which ideas will be
important or valuable. Since innovation is
already difficult, the absence of scope and
clarity of purpose makes it almost impossible
to identify which challenges or problems to
solve, and which ideas are valuable when
ideas are generated.
In their book "Competing for the Future" -
Hamel and Prahalad define strategic intent
as:
An ambitious and compelling dream which
provides emotional and intellectual energy
for the company and defines the journey to
the future
Does your firm have a clearly defined,
compelling vision of its future that people
are invested in?
The Good news
The good news is that creating and
communicating a clear, concise strategy and
strategic intent is something that senior
management theoretically gets paid to do.
Every business
has at least some discussion and
documentation about the capabilities it
offers and the strategies it has that will
make it successful. Often, however, there's
a disconnect between what management wants,
and how it communicates, or what it rewards.
For innovation to take root and flourish, it
is exceptionally helpful for the management
team to state its goals and strategic
direction, and communicate those effectively
inside and outside the organization. Then,
with that clarity in mind, innovation teams
will find the job of generating and
evaluating ideas much simpler. One of the
most difficult jobs in innovation is simply
understanding which ideas are most likely to
be acceptable and aligned to the strategies
of the organization. Communication from the
top about the goals, and reinforcement of
those goals is crucial.
The Bad News
Many firms enjoy the "hedge" when it comes to
stating what they are, and what they intend
to do. Most prefer to "be all things to all
people" rather than state where they will
excel and compete. This makes a muddle of
their marketing, their messaging and their
decision making, because it can be quite
difficult to ascertain what's valuable and
important, and what is not. This lack of
clarity is
especially devastating for innovation teams,
because it is exceptionally difficult to
ascertain what is a "good" idea or a "bad"
idea when there is no strategic clarity.
Oftentimes we are asked by our clients to
help them select ideas from different
brainstorming and ideation events. My first
question is always "which ideas support or
accelerate key strategic goals or
initiatives?" You might not be surprised
that we are often told that is unclear or
uncertain. If you are asking teams to do
risky and uncertain work when they innovate,
at least do them the decency of giving them
clear goals and direction!
Benchmarking
Since benchmarking is a well received
management practice, why not benchmark the
factors that make successful innovators able
to function so well. I'll stipulate that one
of the most important factors you'll find at
Apple, Google, P&G, 3M, Gore and so on is
strategic clarity and well defined strategic
intent, that has been well communicated to
the organization and to the consumer. I've
yet to find a firm that is successfully
innovating without a clear strategic mandate
and communication of that strategic purpose
throughout the organization. Yes, there are
innovators who may be periodically
successful, but corporate success at
innovation depends on strategic clarity, good
communication of those goals and
reinforcement of those goals in the way
people are recognized, rewarded and
evaluated.
A key takeaway for your innovation teams is
that they need to partner with the folks in
your business responsible for internal
communications, to ensure an effective
communication strategy, and with the
executive team to ensure there is clarity
about strategic goals and strategic intent.
Conclusion
Many firms want to be more innovative - in
fact most do. One of the first questions we
are often asked is - what can we do to be
more innovative. Probably the most important
act any firm can take to be more innovative
has more to do with simply defining the value
proposition and strategic intent of the
business as clearly and simply as possible,
and reinforcing that message as frequently
and consistently as possible. With clear
guideposts and scope, every decision becomes
much easier, since anyone can ascertain
whether or not a new project, product or
initiative aligns to the strategic intent.
|
|
Doing something with nothing
|
|
|
Hard Times
The US economy, and the world economy, is
facing one of the worst slowdowns in modern
memory. Budgets and workforces are being
slashed, and many businesses are simply
hunkering down, hoping to get through the next
few quarters to see a resumption of growth in
late 2009 or early 2010. That's a relatively
bleak picture for any business, and an
especially bleak picture for new investment
and new initiatives. What does that mean for
innovation? Is innovation still important,
even in a downturn? Can your team innovate
when cost cutting and pulling back are the norm?
Good Times
More than likely, your organization is
cutting back all expenses, so few new
initiatives will get funded. In many ways,
this is good news for innovation. When times
get tough, and budgets get cut, your team can
work free of the notion that it has to "wait"
for funding, since none is likely to be
forthcoming. Additionally, given nothing,
you'll have the opportunity to work much more
creatively, bootstrapping and finding ways to
innovate that cost little or nothing.
Times of relative prosperity often create
subtle traps for innovation. Since it is a
project
or initiative, innovation teams are staffed
and built
expecting a certain amount of investment and
funding. Thus, the team has to be evaluated and
managed, which adds layers of complexity and
management oversight. That means reporting,
playing by the rules, waiting for the
appropriate approvals and so forth. In good
times, we layer much too much overhead and
caution on an innovation program. So
conversely, during lean times, we may have
one of the best opportunities to leverage our
creativity and innovation skills.
Now, we can leverage the famous Nike tag line
- Just Do It. Innovation hasn't lost it's
importance. In good times or bad times,
there is a constant demand for new products,
services and business models.
Doing something with nothing
Forget about doing more with less. You'll
need to do something with nothing, and
that
should be exceptionally liberating, because
in a slow economy, any new idea that doesn't
cost a lot to generate but may create new
revenues or cut costs is going to be
considered. Removing all the overhead, and
recognizing that you'll receive no resources
will force your team to work in ways that
would not have seemed reasonable before.
It's only in the absence of alternatives that
you'll really be liberated to try things that
you wouldn't have considered previously, and
to think creatively, since there really is
less risk and less oversight.
When times are good, you're much less likely
to consider cannibalizing existing products
or services. Perhaps in troubled times the
weaker products and services that should be
eliminated will be more obvious. When times
are good you don't want to risk upsetting the
apple cart. Now, the apple cart has already
been kicked over. Can innovation make things
worse at this point?
The timing works in your favor
Actually, the timing now works in your favor
as well. As we head down in the downturn and
hopefully bottom out soon, new ideas that are
generated now can work their way through the
product or service development pipeline to
become new products, services or business
models in early 2010. It will take that long
for most firms to generate and evaluate ideas
and then develop and launch the new product
or service. We should be coming out of the
slowdown with an accelerating economy by that
timeframe. So it is important to keep
innovating through the downturn, recognizing
that you may have fewer dollars but probably
more freedom to create and experiment.
Conclusion
Now is the time for innovation. Yes, you'll
need to be creative, since the funding simply
won't be there. However, any new products or
services that can create or sustain revenue
growth are going to be closely considered.
Now is the time to create and exhibit your
innovation chops. People who can do
something with nothing in this economy will
be able to command funds when the economy
starts to grow again.
|
|
|
|
|
If you blinked
Recently, Bruce Nussbaum, a respected voice
on design and innovation, wrote a piece
for BusinessWeek suggesting that "innovation
is dead". In case you missed it, from
Bruce's perspective innovation died in 2008,
killed by "overuse, misuse, narrowness,
incrementalism and failure to evolve". I'm
concerned that Bruce has co-mingled the fate
of the innovation label with the need for the
outcome.
Long Live Innovation
To paraphrase Mark Twain, the announcement of
the death of innovation
is premature, and I suspect what Bruce is
really struggling with is the abuse of the
label. Too many CEOs have used innovation as
a panacea for other problems. Innovation has
been a promise to shareholders and employees,
a mantra to escape humdrum products and
slowing markets. I suspect Bruce is right
when he says innovation has been impacted by
misuse, overuse and incrementalism. I can't
think of many firms that suffer from
"overuse" of innovation, and most are guilty
of incrementalism at best.
But have we achieved a "post modern" period
for innovation? Is the need for new
products, services and business models
somehow less important now than it was a year
or two ago? Have firms improved their
ability to grow organically? Evidence would
suggest that none of these outcomes has been
achieved. So we probably have the same needs
for the promised outcomes of innovations, but
perhaps we've tired of the words without
actions, promises with implementation.
Now, more than ever
In this economy, any good idea that increases
revenue or cuts costs will be examined
carefully and quickly. So clearly we haven't
reached a point where innovation isn't
necessary, or that the corpse is even cold.
Rather, we've reached a point where the words
are tired and overused, and empty promises
about innovation won't hold up. We still
have the same needs, but we need different
management teams or incentives to obtain the
outcomes and possibilities that innovation
promises.
TV killed the radio star
What is going to kill "innovation" is the
inability of many firms to get started and
move past their own fears and inertia. As
noted above, when you've got nothing, you've
got little to lose. Most firms are not in
the best of shape right now, so creating
initiatives to generate interesting new
products and services is clearly one way out
of the muddle. What will drive more firms to
embrace innovation is the realization that
there are no other "safer" tools in the
toolbox, and that radical, changing market
conditions call for radical, interesting,
engaged thinking.
Innovation isn't dead, it isn't even dormant.
In most firms, it is a tool residing behind
the glass that reads "Break in case of
emergency".
|
|
|
|
|
If you'd like to discuss how OVO can work
with you
to improve your innovation strategies, ideation
sessions, innovation processes or software,
contact us today at our website
or
(919) 844-5644 x789.
If you have a topic you'd like to see us
cover or a question you'd like to have us
address, please let us know via the website
above.
If you enjoyed this innovation newsletter, please
pass it along to your friends. If you wish to
unsubscribe, please see the link below.
Sincerely,
Jeffrey Phillips
OVO
phone:
919-844-5644 x789
|
|
|
Innovate On Purpose™
