Become a Master of Innovation with Bill O’Connor

Introduction

Although 84% of executives believe that innovation is critical to their future success, research shows that over 90% of innovation projects are estimated to fail. In The CEO podcast , Sasha Garcia spoke to the master of innovation Bill O'Connor , who is the founder of San Francisco-based consultancy ‘Agents of Innovation’ (AOi) , recently launched a full-stack innovation performance platform - InnoVista, and has worked with everyone from Google to Tesla. Read on if you want to find out how you can successfully integrate innovation into your business, and why now might just be a better time than ever.?

Strategy and innovation are not mutually exclusive?

“In most large companies, strategy and innovation eat each other for breakfast and they're often very against each other. And that’s rational because in some ways strategy is a logical left brain activity and innovation is a right brain activity” O’Connor says. However, this is one of the first mistakes that businesses make. He goes on to argue that if strategy doesn’t have innovation it’s probably a boring strategy.?

So how do you combine the two effectively? Alarmingly, O’Connor states that the percentage of large companies that have an effective corporate strategy is only around 35%. Because of this, it is vital that you have a strong strategy and clear vision. Once this is in place, align your innovation. If you attempt to innovate without strategy then you’re likely going to run into chaos, he warns. One technique he recommends is to create an ‘innovation landscape’ by drawing up a map or aerial view of innovation possibilities.

The Ten Areas to Focus on?

AOi has identified ten areas to focus on in regard to innovation, something they describe as being their rosetta stone. Three of these areas are internal, three are external, and four they call the ‘bridge’. For example, an internal focus would be on innovation culture - do people in the company know what innovation is? Are they encouraged and empowered to know?

Four Important ‘bridge’ questions:

How is your innovation process?

How are your innovation projects?

How are your innovation launches?

How are your innovation successes?

You need to be in control of all ten areas. If one area is weak, this will affect all of the others.

Why are companies not Launching?

When O’Connor asked over 250 companies what they have launched in the last five years that they consider to be innovative the most common answer was usually “nothing really” or “maybe 1 or 2”. So why don’t companies launch?

O’Connor believes that it’s to do with psychology and the typical structure of companies, arguing that other than Silicon Valley, companies are not set up to take risks: “They are run by intelligent nice people who got up the ladder by not being wrong - you hit targets, you hit quota. Like evolution - we evolve not to die.” Work culture supports being dependable and good at staying in your lane if you want to receive a promotion. However, according to O’Connor, these values are completely at odds with the needs of innovation: “If you’re not trying and failing you’re not growing”. In Silicon Valley, the more failed start-ups you have the better.?

How to Launch More?

The first thing O’Connor asks CEOs is “Where is your chief innovation launch officer?” Someone with this role works purely on launching. The culture of the company needs to be focused on launches, or as O’Connor puts it “shoot and score!” It’s also important to create a curriculum and offer training on how to achieve more success through launches to ensure that everyone in the company understands the importance.

He warns companies to watch out for allocating too much time and resources to research: “I call this IBNU - interesting but not useful. Okay, you have research but you haven't launched in four years”. Remember, without risk, you can’t grow.

Is it a good time to launch?

Many people are wary of taking risks as we’re in the midst of a recession and an era of uncertainty. However, O’Connor turns this on its head: “As Winston Churchill said, never let a good crisis go to waste”. In fact, the change associated with a crisis “knocks psychology out of the window”, O’Connor says. Many companies panic and go into survival mode, not realizing that by cutting and hacking they’re missing opportunities. Don’t listen to the advice of the media or the board and put some money towards innovation in these times.

Conclusion

AOi recently launched a full innovation platform called InnoVista. This new SaaS platform has been designed to give CEOs, executives, and innovation professionals the power to measure, improve, and sustain their organization's innovation performance at levels that have never been possible before. In a period of rapid change, innovation is more important than ever, so before you allocate all of your resources to researching and playing it safe, you might just want to prioritize innovation.