Can innovation be managed?
Anecdotal evidence and public perception suggests that innovation is a spontaneous, unpredictable process, a sort of the Holy Grail of corporate wishful thinking. And some would argue that innovation is just a skill that some have while others just lack. Yet, in an increasingly competitive technological landscape, the most innovative companies will dominate.
I believe innovation is not only something that can happen repeatedly, but that it’s a process that can be managed. To spur innovation, leaders must provide an innovation/lab environment that embraces diversity, allows failure and runs lean.
Innovation grows from diversity
The magnetic compass was invented in the 11th century by Shen Kuo who combined his knowledge of astronomy, mathematics, physics, geography, cartography, magnetics, optics and many other sciences. Not surprisingly, it was he who combined this diverse knowledge to produce a compass, discovering along the way that magnetic and geographical south are different.
It would be great to hire people who are experts in multiple areas of science, but it’s increasingly rare these days. A knowledge area requires either a major time commitment to master (10,000 famous hours, according to Malcolm Gladwell), or a constantly-updated stream of information that’s “embedded” in the flow of new discoveries (arXiv, a major open source scientific medium for publications, now sees several hundred papers in computer science alone per day). Consider the sheer volume of information being created every day. According to MicroFocus, there were 5.2 billion new Google searches every day and 90 percent of internet content was generated in 2016.
So, are we doomed when it comes to innovation?