Thomas Edison, the quintessential innovation expert and businessman, said it more than a century ago. But no one seems to listen:
Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.
When organizations launch innovation initiatives, they focus almost all of their time and energy on that initial one percent — the thrilling hunt for the breakthrough idea. They draw guidance from countless books, articles and training programs that treat innovation as though it is synonymous with creativity.
Creativity is only one ingredient in the recipe for innovation. The much ballyhooed burst of inspiration is merely a starting point.
Because of this fundamental misconception, companies invest extraordinary sums to produce a staggering number of ideas on paper that never become anything more than ideas on paper. The real innovation challenge lies beyond the idea. It lies in a long, hard journey — from imagination to impact.
Moreover, the business leaders most directly responsible for making innovation happen often view themselves to be locked in a heroic, long-odds battle against an oversized, life-draining bureaucracy. And in a sense they are.
It’s just not, not smart. It’s not effective either. To tackle the 99% part of the equation, companies need a better model for executing innovation.
The Key Insight: Your Stroke of Genius
So how do you best manage the journey?
The answer is the subject of world’s largest privately funded study. Our study has produced a deeply insightful collection of innovation case studies — rigorously researched histories of endeavors to effectively move innovation initiatives forward inside large and established organizations such as IBM, Dow Jones, and Deere & Company. The ten year, multi-million dollar project also produced two bestselling books: 10 Rules for Strategic Innovators and The Other Side of Innovation, both published by Harvard Business Review Press.
It must begin with an acknowledgment that the forces that resist innovation are not the work of some sort of evil anti-change faction. It is not the result of laziness or timidity, nor can it be blamed on complacency, convention, or conservatism.
To the contrary, these forces derive from the endeavors of good people doing good work. They arise from efforts to achieve the most basic goals of every business — serving today’s customers, defeating today’s rivals, operating with speed and efficiency, and maximizing profits. This may sound routine. But to do all of this, and do it well, every hour of every day, organizations must operate like Porsches racing down the autobahn. They must be Performance Engines.
Managerial methods for optimizing the Performance Engine have been honed over many decades. They are well understood.
Nonetheless, the awesome power of the Performance Engine can also present formidable barriers to executing innovation initiatives. Most obviously, the Performance Engine is stingy with resources. It is so intent on eliminating waste that it instinctively swats down nascent innovations. After all, from the perspective of the Performance Engine, anything that does not make an immediate contribution can only be considered a distraction.
A more daunting barrier is also more subtle. It lies in the method of the Performance Engine, a method that is the same, in every company and in every industry. It is to strive to make every task, every process, and every procedure as repeatable and predictable as possible. Unfortunately, repeatable and predictable is also the antithesis of innovation, which is, by very definition, nonroutine and uncertain.
In these fundamental incompatibilities lie the innovation struggle and the key insight. These incompatibilities strike right at the heart of how organizations are designed, how leaders are trained, even how accountants measure.
A New Team Dedicated to the Task
Senior executives often expect innovation leaders to somehow grapple with these conflicts alone — but one person against the Performance Engine is always a bad bet. To succeed with innovation efforts, while sustaining the highest standards of excellence within the Performance Engine, companies must utilize the full toolbox of organizational levers at their disposal.
To move an innovation initiative forward, a company must build a new kind of organizational unit — an Innovation Team — that has little in common with the Performance Engine. When built well, the Innovation Team wins not despite the Performance Engine, but in concert with it.
“Break all of the rules,” the mantra goes. It is not an entirely A misguided starting point for building the Innovation Team, but it is needlessly antagonistic towards the Performance Engine. Further, it seems to imply no rules. To succeed, the Innovation Team needs a distinct set of rules — but rules that are every bit as disciplined as those of the Performance Engine, and in many ways more demanding.
Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble are international bestselling authors of 10 Rules for Strategic Innovators and The Other Side of Innovation. Vijay is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading experts on strategy and innovation ranked #3 globally on Harvard’s Thinkers50. Chris, a McKinsey Award winner is on the faculty at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. Both books and the related training workshop “Leading Innovation” are available through International Thought Leader Network www.ithoughtleader.com.
Written for TrainingIndustry.com
