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Skyline Business School |
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Skyline Business School |
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Issue:4
Inspiring Innovation
One of the toughest challenges organizations have been facing forever is how to innovate
and think creatively, whilst simultaneously keeping other aspects of the business running
like a well-oiled machine.
How to challenge your people to an extent, that everyday new ideas, new styles of working,
new strategies, new lines of businesses are generated.
To create such atmospheres, some of the world's innovative leaders
have this to say:
Make it the Norm
To encourage innovation, it has to be made ordinary. If it is highlighted as a
specialty, then it is isolated from what's normal. For innovation to be reliable and
regular, it has to addressed systematically like any other business issue in which the
problem is identified and then solved: what needs to be accomplished and how? What are the
resources required? Who shall be on the team and how to motivate them? How shall the
success be measured? Creativity shouldn't be treated as a mysterious gift of few but as
the everyday task of non-obvious connections - bringing together things that normally
don't work together.
However, isolating innovation from mainstream business can create a perception that
leadership and creativity are two opposites. Only when innovators operate with the
credibility of leaders does innovation become a productive part of everyday business.
Put aside Ego
One of the important issues while dealing with innovation is to help people broaden their
perspective. Getting people to expand their views - to see a situation through others'
eyes - often raises ego issues. People don't want to believe that they are doing things in
ways that are less than optimal. In fact, one of the hardest things about innovation is
getting people to accept that the work they work just might not be the best.
Mix People Up
One of the surest ways to get a job done more innovatively is to reorganize frequently.
When people are put into a new structure, it stimulates them to rethink what they're doing
on a day-to-day basis. The need to transform, orient people towards a new goal, and
reorganizing them is a sure way to foster innovation. If people are allowed to focus on
the satisfaction of setting high goals and then knocking the barriers to achieve them,
inconveniences of restructuring can be left behind.
Don't Fear Failure
Innovation is also about taking risks and learning from failure. To tap into innovation of
its applicable kind, enough measures need to be taken to ensure that people aren't afraid
of failure and that they do a lot of experimentation. Incremental improvements and
experiments happen all the time. Innovations need to be encouraged when the organization
is doing well, when its chin is up. Last thing to do when in the lead is to be complacent.
Hire Outsiders
Another important fodder to innovation is to hire people who have experience outside the
said fields - creative people who can apply what they've learned in dynamic,
customer-centric categories to the businesses of the organization. Employing people with
diverse skills and talents help challenge status quo when developing business strategies.
Abandon The Crowd
A near universal misconception about innovation is that the ideal goal is to create the
next hot product. That's why more organizations focus their R&D dollars there. But
because it's increasingly easy for rivals to copy the new product and produce cheaper
alternatives; rarely getting a return on investment. The principle thing that can be done
here is to help people see that there are actually many types of innovation - product
innovation is one type, but so is innovation in customer service, in business models, in
networking and so on.
Companies often miss out on opportunities for innovation because they focus too closely on
competition. It is possible to spend less and make more money in innovation if one pays
attention to non-obvious areas, the places your competition might have overlooked.
Let go of your Ideas
It is essential to build a culture where there is no such thing as a bad idea. It is of
priority to get as many ideas as possible out of individuals' heads and into the groups'
heads. The ideas then can become collective problems or puzzles that percolate through the
group. And very often, some time later, the person/group that came up with the nascent
idea has a breakthrough insight to take the package forward. Firm deadlines and tight
budgets keep organizations focused on creating viable products and getting them to market
as soon as possible. There's no substitute for getting the product in the market and
getting customer responses. The true test of innovation is how the market responds.
Don't Under estimate Science
A primary obstacle to innovation is to get funding for research and development for the
product/service/methodology in question. Pure Science always drives innovation just as
much as markets do. An incredible amount of technology transfer happens during R&D,
when the most advanced tools are being built for experiments. By encouraging researchers
to file patents on R&D breakthroughs, and seek joint ventures to develop commercial
applications, technology transfers can be made visible.
However, it would be wrong to say that pure science is all that matters. Science and
technology go hand in hand.
Fight Negetivity
Innovation is like professional sports: Looks easy, but when you're on the field, you see
how complicated and difficult it is. The key is to build conviction. Few setups have the
conviction to proceed down a path in the face of differing opinions from the industry,
competitors, analysts and the media. When companies get discouraged by these challenges
and lose conviction, they make mistakes.
Ask "WHAT IF?"
In order to be successful in new breakthroughs and innovations, it is necessary that very
few constraints be placed on its researchers. Continually exploring new ideas and asking
"what if" questions, allows pursuing the ones, which have the potential. It is
necessary of course to provide focus, set reasonable goals, and map out at times. Stress
also needs to layed upon the importance of getting something out there, even if the
product isn't 100% of what was originally envisioned. Researchers always want to go for
the last 2 % of performance, but it is necessary to remind them that it's better to get a
sufficient solution out fast and then continue to enhance it.
Merge patience and passion
One of the most essential ingredients to sound research and development for innovation in
fields like drug research etc is to have passion for the work. A mandatory partner to
passion is diversity. People with different backgrounds bring different frames of
reference to a problem and can spark of an exciting and dynamic exchange of ideas. When
the time frames of R&D are large due to continuous road blocks and dead-ends, passion
is required for sustenance.
Outsmart your Customers
For innovation to be a success, the rules need to be bended. For a radical product
innovation, experiment like never before. Break the cardinal rule of business: Always does
what the customer wants. Do something even better.
Experiment like Crazy
One of the favorite ways to encourage innovation has for long been an experimental
approach to R&D. By backing the team players to plot different approaches to the
future, by trying to envision out of the box, by setting up an expectation of learning
from the experiments.
Each idea will not be successful. The need is to get proper insights as to why each played
the way it did. Dangerous brew of fear and complacency - staying steady out of the fear of
failing or blowing too much money or betting on the wrong idea - prevent innovation.
Make it Meaningful
A simple yet effective way to foster innovation - both the technological innovation that
leads to new products/services and organizational innovation that improves the way
business is done- is to align business objectives with ideals. Doing so reaches the
people's intrinsic motivation. Obviously, extrinsic motivation is essential, stock
options, bonuses, and organization research awards. But the fact of the matter is people
do a better job when they believe in what they do and how the setup behaves, when they see
they are contributing to the company's objectives/ideals/goals.
Another sure way of killing two birds with one stone: Good corporate citizenship. When
employees see the effect they can have to change society as a whole or have a substantial
impact, they unleash their energies and enthusiasm into their work. Of course, it helps to
have a good brand image of a do - gooder.
Stop the Bickering
The key to spurring a wave to innovation is to create a structure and climate that
eliminates internal competition. To destroy rivalries between divisions not by dismantling
divisions but my ending people's affiliation with them - creating a matrix structure. A
program headed by a manager, should be responsible for a range of projects. People working
on these projects would come from a HR pool whose allegiance would be the mission of the
program rather than to a specific program. Creating cross-functional teams with
cross-functional roles and responsibilities only means increased competitive focus on the
task in hand. This structural change in addition to eliminating internal competition,
heights external competitive focus, which in turn fosters innovation. Furthermore, because
employees don't have any enforced loyalties to any program head or group, they feel free
to suggest and brainstorm, which benefits the entire organization.
Don't Innovative,Solve Problems
At the end, the very need to inspire innovation is up for questioning. Don't try to
encourage creativity for creativity's sake; instead focus on encouraging creative (best)
solutions to real problems. Innovation is good only if it's useful. Re-organizing only to
do something different is not the way out. It has to lead to better internal communication
and smoother exchange of ideas. To encourage USEFUL innovation two things can be done:
One, promote risk taking- being open to experimentation and be philosophical when things
go wrong. The motto should be, "Always make new mistakes".
Two, give people a reason to be enthusiastic about trying new tools, whether the
organization sells those tools or trying to get them to use internally. A sure way to
initiate this is to start experimentation right at the top.
Reviewed By Harvard Business Review -
by Abhimanyu Puri,
BBA-L1-MAHE
Comments and questions: info@skylinecollege.com
URL: http://www.skylinecollege.com
