Cracking the Code: The Experts Talk Fostering #Innovation

When you run a business, or work for a large organisation, innovation can sometimes set up a dilemma. It can define the future of an company, and lead to growth and profitability, or it can seem like a threat.  It can render products, markets and jobs redundant. It can be uncomfortable, and it can compromise profitability.

Innovation - particularly disruptive innovation - involves risk.

So what do you do when charged with communicating the value of innovation to a business? How do you embrace and foster innovation in such a way to reduce market risk, and improve the likelihood of acceptance within a firm, and encourage growth?

While this is something that perpetually occupies my thinking, I know that there is always room for learning about best practice in disruptive innovation. And I wanted to learn from the greatest thinkers on innovation. So I reached out to my networks and to some amazing minds on the subject to see if they would be willing to share their thoughts with me.

I have to say I was amazed and humbled by the responses I received. And I’ve learned a lot. I’m now sharing some of these ideas here, and will follow up with further insights on other questions in posts over the coming weeks, because it’s worth sharing all the fabulous insights I received.  I hope you enjoy reading them and learning from them as I did.

Question: What's the best way you've seen of fostering disruptive innovation in a large enterprise?

Jonathan Salem Baskin, President, Arcadia Communications Lab:
I think the key to successful large enterprise disruptive innovation is to understand that it happens over time, and is not necessarily the outcome of a specific technology or startup idea.

Gijs van Wulfen, Speaker on Innovation & Design Thinking, Founder of the FORTH innovation method:
Big companies are like the Titanic. They think they are indestructible. The best way to foster disruptive innovation at big companies is have leaders who take 'the potential iceberg spotting' seriously. And act swiftly to encourage and support internal innovators with big ideas.

Martin Lindstrom, Branding Expert & Consultant, Best-Selling Author and Brand Futurist:
Politics is the biggest deterrent to disruptive innovation. It kills all forms of creativity. The best way to foster disruptive innovation is by becoming consumer-centric. This consumer focused mindset allows the brand to constantly challenge the normal practices of how it interacts with the consumer, and discover the truths of what they think and feel about the brand. This, in turn, reduces politics.

Drew Boyd, Executive Director Master of Science in Marketing Program at University of Cincinnati:
To foster disruptive innovation, companies need to apply systematic methods of generating new ideas, methods such as Systematic Inventive Thinking (SIT). These methods are based on patterns used by innovators for thousands of years, and they produce a steady stream of rich and novel ideas that would not likely have been produced otherwise.

Dr. Emily Verstege, CEO and Founding Director, Multiplicite:
The best way to foster creative innovation is to make sure people ask 'Why' at least once, and preferably more often. It takes a leadership team to model that behaviour and embed it. Amazon has done a great job of this and, more locally (in Australia), Lisa Messenger's Renegade Collective embodies this.

Steve Blakeman, Managing Director (Global Accounts) at OMD:
Best example of disruptive innovation has to be the Netflix 'freedom & responsibility culture'. They believed that the traditional '9 to 5' working day simply didn't work for them so they took the bold move of abolishing working hours / vacations and introducing a fully flexible working approach - basically you work as much or as little as you need to, as long as you reach your agreed targets.

Brian Solis, Principal Analyst, Altimeter Group:
Over the last three years, I’ve studied the maturity paths of some of the world’s leading brands including Dell, Discover, GM, Harvard, Lego, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Nestlé, Novartis, Sephora, Starbucks, Target, among many others... I consistently found that customer experience (CX) often served as a primary catalyst for driving change with CMOs and CIOs helping them come together to jointly lead common efforts.

Question reminder: What's the best way you've seen of fostering disruptive innovation in a large enterprise?

Don Peppers, Founding Partner, Peppers & Rogers Group:
Focus on the culture of the company, not the rules and processes. You want a culture that celebrates curiosity and rebellion.

Gregg Fraley, Partner & Chief Solver, Kiln:
A huge emergency is what’s usually required for a large enterprise to focus on disruptive innovation. Without a big motivating emergency most larger groups settle for incremental innovation because it’s less risky, easier to do, and it doesn’t cannibalise their existing business. Very few large organisations master disruptive innovation because there is so much resistance to the kind of change it normally entails. It’s much easier for a start-up to do something new. Disruptive innovation is fostered in large enterprises where the CEO and entire executive team have a lot of stomach for big risk and change - think Apple under Steve Jobs. Large organisations often pay lip service to disruptive innovation, while squashing big ideas - think Kodak.  

Nick Skillicorn, CEO & Founder, Improvides Consulting: The best way to foster disruptive innovation at established organisations is to get them to understand that it isn't just about new products, it can be about any change which adds value to the end customer. This could be anything from the product itself, the service that comes with it, new business models, how the customer is informed and cared for and even how the operations work. Probably one of the best introductions to this topic comes from the book "Ten Types of Innovation" by Doblin, which I would recommend every leader to read.

Alice Almeida, Manager of Innovation & Insights, Hitwise:
Honestly, I haven't seen many large enterprises foster disruptive innovation well, and it’s because of this that we have seen so many new kids on the block grow from nothing, to now challenging the original enterprise. The most important thing here is always knowing your true consumers and delivering what they want, not what you think they want.  Traditional enterprises aren't so great at doing that as they often become too comfortable. Great examples where new companies have shaken up industries are Uber and Vinomofo. They have changed the way millions of Australians travel and buy wine.

Question reminder: What's the best way you've seen of fostering disruptive innovation in a large enterprise?

Heidi Therese Dangelmaier, Disruptive category innovation for female + digital native market:
I think disruption will be forced on brands because the classic tools they have relied on to grow are not yielding results. My argument is that these tools are based on faulty models of nature, including human nature. For me when it comes to opening up to markets, I still believe that focusing on universal needs, finding natural markets vs pushing ideas is the purest way to lead progress.

Frederic Joye, Co-Founder & CRO, Arcanys: From the various enterprises we have helped with their innovation process, the vast majority have been handling their innovative projects as some kind of spin-off idea, where the team was on their own to come up with the project and removed from the main “business”.  Having talked with many of the people involved in the innovation process in large corporations, they almost all mention that the politics can kill innovative projects if they are not managed separately from the day-to-day operations. Most of the projects that were not handled in a “spin-off” way were much harder to get to life than others.

Jonathan Salem Baskin (Reprised!): A mountain can be just as disruptive as an earthquake; while the latter is easy to envision, and destroying things easier than building them, the customers, suppliers, and employees of an established business should be an advantage to creating the former. A time-lapse movie of a mountain would appear quite disruptive. So, for instance, when thyssenkrupp announces a 15-year program to all-but-make its (and others') steel mills carbon neutral - and will of course iterate that plan as the science and tech improves - it is embracing the reality of step change in large organisations.

What I’ve learned from these ideas is that fostering disruptive innovation needs to be a steady, systematic process, operated in a safe space - a place where failure is tolerated. And it needs to be customer-focussed, addressing true needs of the business. Most of all...

Organisations that foster disruptive innovation best are those that celebrate big, bold and interesting ideas

I want to sincerely thank all those I’ve cited in this post for their thoughts on innovation and disruption.  And I encourage you all to read more about their research and innovation initiatives - I’ve included links below.

Please also share with me, your responses to these ideas. What has been your experience of selling the idea of disruptive innovation among management teams in businesses? How do you set out to be disruptive?  What do you see as the best examples of disruptive innovations in enterprise? I’m keen to hear all your thoughts.  

Thanks to my fabulous experts…..

Jonathan Salem Baskin, https://jonathansalembaskin.com/ Latest book: Today in the Histories of Social Media (2014)

Gijs van Wulfen, https://www.gijsvanwulfen.com/ Latest Book: The Innovation Expedition: A Visual Toolkit to Start Innovation (2013) Latest post: Why Do Incremental Innovations Dominate?

Martin Lindstrom, https://www.martinlindstrom.com/ Latest Book: Small Data: The Tiny Clues That Uncover Huge Trends (2016)

Drew Boyd, https://www.insidetheboxinnovation.com/authors/ Latest Book: Inside the Box: A Proven System of Creativity for Breakthrough Results (2014)

Emily Verstege, https://emilyverstege.com/

Steve Blakeman, https://omdsaid.com/author/steveblakeman/

Brian Solis, https://www.briansolis.com/ Latest Book: X: The Experience When Business Meets Design (2015)

Don Peppers, https://www.peppersandrogersgroup.com/ Latest Book: Customer Experience: What, How and Why Now (2016)

Gregg Fraley, https://greggfraley.com/ Latest Book: Jack's Notebook: A business novel about creative problem solving (2008)

Nick Skillicorn, Latest Book: 30 days of Creativity Training (2013) To become even more creative and innovative, get your free account from Nick's site today.

Alice Almeida, https://au.linkedin.com/in/alicemdonaldson

Heidi Therese Dangelmaier, https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/girlapproved

Frederic Joye, https://www.arcanys.com/team/