5 easy phrases that kill innovation

Many people, teams and organizations in the world are at this very moment working hard to make their innovation efforts fruitful - and many of them are succeeding! There’s also an abundance of others - the non-believers - that for one reason or another don’t recognize the value of innovating.

As innovation professionals, we certainly understand the reluctance. After all, innovation is the poster child of uncertainty. There are so many pitfalls along the way and so many ways to fail, without trying to actively sabotage it. Based on our own experience, we hand-picked 5 “most popular” phrases that can instantly derail any attempts to manage innovation activities.

We’re not ready

It takes literally zero days to be ready to innovate. You have business objectives, and those objectives are not being realized because you also have business problems.

But the most valuable thing you have is people who feel those problems. They know their pains. They have experience and often their experience helps them come up with ideas to solve the problems.

If you’re among the lucky few who don’t have problems - just ignore the above.

We’re doing fine now

And so were many others. Global giants that changed the world in one way or another. Multi-billion-dollar companies that could not flop. And yet they did, and they remain now only in our memories - as perfect examples of what not to do.

Innovation is intended to prevent “death by status quo”. If it can happen to the strongest of us, it can definitely happen to all. What helps a lot is looking into the future, scouting for new trends and technologies which might disrupt our playground.

We have other problems

Wait, wait, wait! Innovation is intended to solve problems! It’s not intended to make the board members feel good about themselves.

We just have to actively seek ideas, instead of waiting for that moment of accidental inspiration. Focus your efforts on a single business challenge, run an ideation campaign and, in a matter of hours or days, you will have plenty of ideas on how to solve your problems.

Assuming, of course, you have your innovation management function set up properly.

It’s too risky

It absolutely is! But so is crossing the road. That’s why we have processes (look left and right, wait for the green light, etc.), tools (traffic lights, pedestrian crossings), and people (traffic police, crossing guards). All of a sudden, crossing the road is a lot less dangerous.

Same goes for your innovation efforts - with the right processes, tools and people, it becomes much more predictable. We highly recommend it!

We’re following industry best practices

Completely understandable. After all, who of us dares challenge the “industry best practices”, right?

In the real world, it looks a bit like this:

1. A competitor does something cool.
2. We see it, we like it, we copy it to protect our market position.
3. Another competitor sees what we did and they do the same.

We didn’t create a “best practice”. We created a perfect machine for replicating errors. If we blindly copy, we’re not helping our customers - we’re helping the competitors. That’s why human-centered design is a key component of any innovation.

Don’t feel discouraged if you hear these or similar phrases. There are people who are less risk-prone, and they play a valuable role in any organization, serving as checks and balances and preventing us innovators from running wild.

As long as the innovation strategy, rules and processes are clear, the innovation engine is destined to run efficiently.

BONUS:

We only heard it once, but our absolute favorite was a response we received after briefly explaining what we do to a group of people having coffee at a conference.

The response was: “Innovation management sounds like the first thing to be shut down when budget cuts happen.”???

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