How to be Australia's least innovative company

(Originally published in the Australian Financial Review, March 23, 2017)

If your organisation is aspiring to be one of the least innovative organisations in Australia, there are several things to start aiming for.

Data analysis conducted by innovation consultancy Inventium across entries from The Australian Financial Review's Most Innovative Companies list reveals several key themes.

Here are several rules to follow if you are aiming to be a non-innovative organisation.

Give people a title, but no time

A LinkedIn search of people in Australia who have "innovation" as part of their job title reveals thousands of results. In the past few years there has been a distinct trend to putting the word innovation in among other words of a job title. Examples include "Director of Disruption and Innovation", "Executive General Manager – Strategy, Portfolio and Innovation", "Senior Vice President – Solution Engineering, Cloud Sales, Industries & Innovation", and many others.

While in many cases these people are legitimately helping to create the future for their company, at Australia's least innovative organisations people are given a great job title but no time to actually pursue innovation. They are expected to work on innovation, but no time is actually carved out in the design of their role to achieve this without innovation becoming a night job.

So to kill innovation, incorporate innovation into people's roles but then ensure that BAU tasks take priority.

Pull resources off innovation when there is a crisis in the core business

A common scenario for organisations is when the company experiences a downfall in revenues, "discretionary spending" is cut and all resources are directed at defending the existing business. While this may appear to be a smart decision in the short term, the companies that go into periods of turmoil and come out on top are those that have not lost touch with the long term and what their future customers want.

A review of the world's most innovative companies shows that innovation doesn't get put on hold during times of economic hardship. For example, Proctor and Gamble launched Crest White Strips in 2001 and Apple launched the iPod in the same year (when the NASDAQ was down 30 per cent).

Allocating resources strategically means adopting a focus on existing and future customers and making sure you are in the best position to service their needs, today and tomorrow. So to avoid being an effective innovator, just focus on the present and short-term needs of your organisation and your customers.

Expect everyone to be a natural innovator

Contrary to popular belief, most people are not "born" innovative. Instead, the skills to be an effective innovator, such as the ability to identify customer-driven opportunities, generate creative solutions, and experiment with concepts are skills that are learned.

For organisations wanting to kill innovation, or not even produce anything noteworthy in the first place, it is important to expect people to have the skills and not invest in building this capability. From an analysis of last year's least innovative companies, a key to ensuring innovation does not thrive is professing to care about it, but then refusing to invest in employees' training and development in innovation skills.

For leaders who are at the helm of innovative organisations, or are in denial that they are guilty of any of the above traits, entries for the 2017 AFR Most Innovative Companies list are now open.

Dr Amantha Imber is the founder of Inventium, the innovation consultancy that assesses and compiles the AFR Most Innovative Companies list.

Read more: https://www.afr.com/leadership/brw-lists/most-innovative-companies/how-to-be-australias-least-innovative-company-20170323-gv4kp4#ixzz4cOYfI2iP 

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