Innovation is a legitimate business process..

Everyday is a New Idea!

“To encourage creativity, innovation and free thought, you have to discourage uniformity”, says Tom Dattilo, CEO of Findlay, Ohio-based manufacturer of automotive components. At a time when Darwin’s survival of the fittest theory holds extremely well, companies are trying hard to look for new ideas and trace creativity in them. Economic uncertainty is forcing companies to avoid risk rather than generate ideas. Having realised the importance of innovation and its execution, companies are adopting cutting-edge techniques to motivate their employees to generate ideas.

Real-time ideas

All said and done, top managements take ample care to recruit candidates with brilliant ideas, which could be implemented for their company’s growth. However, as Michael May, global managing partner of Accenture’s Strategy & Business Architecture service line says, “Innovation by itself is not worth much. The key is in being able to translate innovations into commercial reality very quickly”.

Failures propel

Innovation is not always easily handled. The shams and failures that Starbucks coffee and Sony Walkman faced when they were launched are proof enough! Organisations have innumerable tales of failures in their endeavour to innovate and manage risk simultaneously. Maintaining balance is one of the greatest challenges that CEOs face in propelling innovation.

Mix and match

Robert Sutton, professor of organisational behaviour at Stanford Engineering School and author of Weird Ideas That Work: 11 ½ Practices for Promoting, Managing and Sustaining Innovation, questions the right mix of routine work and innovative work that is required for organisational success. The mix though depends on the industry and the company, and the time frame required to shape the innovation in question.

Chance affair

Innovation never happens by force. An organisation’s culture encourages it. Brewing a culture is just a part of the innovation game. An innovation management system that evaluates ideas, culls keepers and discards the balance is thus crucial.

Innovation management

Managing innovation is a chaotic process. Therefore, ‘innovation management system’ sounds an oxymoron. Some companies that have successfully implemented their creative ideas and managed chaotic innovation are 3M, Intel and Disney Corp.

Disney holds monthly forums called “gong shows” where anyone, employees and non-employees are motivated to pitch in ideas for new attraction. At 3M innovations are rewarded monetarily. Inventors vie with each other for $ 50,000 “Genesis Grants” to develop prototypes and to test market. At Intel, employees follow the policy of ‘copy exactly ’ to the extent that every plant has the same pipe painted in the same colour. Yet while experimenting they follow different guidelines. At Disneyland, though the operational processes are strictly scripted, the ‘ imagineering’ department finds no bounds.

Order and chaos

Structuring and encoding strict procedures at the same time providing scope for imagination to take shape is essential for innovation management. Studies suggest that the ability to suppress variation on one side of a business while amplifying it on the other provides a valuable competitive edge. It was observed that companies that failed in innovation are those that were either overly bureaucratic or overly chaotic.

Two objectives

“Organisations are faced with a dual objective of creating a climate that allows innovation, and cost reduction along with efficient product distribution. Both the objectives are diametrically opposite”, says Michael May. Efficient top management understands these metrics and carefully promotes smooth operations and generation of ideas simultaneously.

Twin fundamentals

To accomplish the dual objective, two fundamentals are interwoven, clarity of the vision statement and defined policies. These fundamentals develop good ideas. Good ideas promote successful innovations. Therefore, ideally employee’s job description should include idea generation. Also, employees must be evaluated on those parameters in their performance reviews. Michael May says, “It’s important to tie this to performance metrics, and it must permeate to the bottom”.

Ideas are ideas!

Every idea is worthy of consideration. For example, Banknorth Group’s CEO William Ryan runs a strange contest named ‘Stupid Rules’, which invites employees to identify unintelligent rules. If the management agrees, the idea generator is rewarded. One such entry contended that the bank’s customers mustn’t be kept waiting in the chilling cold. They must be let in before the bank’s official opening time. It led to a new policy: A cup of coffee for early arrivals!

Count them too…!

Well, it wouldn’t be prudent to deny customers the right to generate ideas. Patrick Barwise, professor at the London Business School says, “The best early warning signs of threats and opportunities tend to come from talking to your most demanding customers about their problems and experiences. But you need a process to capture those insights”.

Apart from nurturing a corporate culture that encourages failure and constantly seeks creative approaches, innovators must also emphasise on skilful implementation and evaluation of ideas. Appraisals should be part of monthly meetings and feedback must be appreciated.

Yet another challenge!

Knowing when to launch innovation is another challenge that innovators face. Obsession with the innovation, because the team has put in emotions along with efforts, is a common phenomenon. Therefore, innovators must be trained to plan their innovation. Novartis Pharmaceutical pays its employees to stop a failing plan of action.

An organisation’s culture must incorporate failure as well. California-based design firm Ideo, the Palo Alto believes that, “Enlightened trial and error outperforms the planning of flawless intellects” its CEO David Kelly reinforces this mantra.

The indefinable path

There is no defined path for innovation. Nor is there a defined formula. However, it is important to encourage innovation apart from having a clearly articulated vision and a well-delineated innovation management system. Michael May says, “The role of innovation has to manifest itself in the CEO agenda and resonate in the way the company motivates and manages itself”.

Go ahead…innovate…!

To promote a culture that encourages innovation, centralisation must be discouraged. Hierarchical levels must be flattened and every employee given autonomy but made responsible. Organisations striving to stay ahead in competition can actually do so if they follow this paradigm.

Reference:
The ManageMentor