How innovative is your corporate innovation?

Innovation. Disruption. These are the biggest buzz words in the last few years. Early on, companies in high technology domain used to talk about innovation. Today almost every large corporation prides itself in its innovation programs. Regardless of what field they are in. Hence we see an endless stream of new products and services hitting the market. In many cases, taking it to the extreme, with meaningless product/ variant extensions. Because most large corporations 'do' innovation the traditional way. Leaving room for new age organisations (startups) to nibble away at their lunch, bite by bite.

Result is that despite all the thrust on innovation by large corporations, the attention is entirely being taken away by startups. Many fledgling organisations who without a doubt stand a lot more strongly for innovation than the cumulative might of corporate giants. So what made that happen?

Thus the important question

Does your corporation just 'do' innovation or do you 'embrace' innovation?

When you 'do' innovation, only a small part of the organisation gets engaged in this program. Namely the product development and R&D teams. Every other team happily chugs along the old way. However, when you 'embrace' innovation, every part of the organisation gets engaged in the innovation program. Thats when real difference happens.

Let me elaborate.

Lets take a typically successful startup. Take an example to your liking. There have been many remarkable companies who have become giants in the last two decades or so. Now look at whats common among all of the them. They started with zero resources. In money, manpower, machinery, technology, licenses. Everything has been built from scratch with just an idea and dint of human endeavour of a handful of people. Thus they not only had to figure out a way of building products and services without money, but also along the way have to figure out innovative ways of engaging employees, raising capital, developing technology and getting around licensing issues. Thus evolved not just new products or services but entirely disrupted business models and organisations.

Consider the case of human resources. Corporations used to thrive on employee loyalty. Employees were happy receiving a small annual bonus and a watch for long service. That changed to more frequent employee pampering program to part ownership of the company to 'do as you please' culture. Today large organisations are built without many employees. What would been employees are independent business partners ala Uber, Airbnb. Can these different organisations follow similar HR policies? I highly doubt it. No imagine an established large corporate in transport or hospitality doing the same. Even if they keep innovating their service endlessly, can they ever compete with individual enterprise of millions of small entrepreneurs working as one?

Large corporations love to build huge offices and tie up capital. Take out large bank loans and suffer to service them ( we are all watching the NPA story unfold). Processes, logistics, communication, manufacturing, everything is being innovated or turned on its head.

Thus it is not enough to merely 'do' innovation in end consumer products. In today's day and age, it is imperative to 'embrace' innovation in every aspect of a business. And the best way to do it - don't even dream of doing it yourself. Bring in the upstarts. Allow strangers to come in and break down your walls and build a new structure of your organisation. You will be amazed with the transformation of your organisation.

But real innovation is hard. It is not about the first idea that comes your way. Good innovation process should start with hundreds of ideas and have a process to funnel down the most relevant ones, test them before embracing. Implementing a successful innovative idea from another organisation is not innovation. It is merely copying. Every organisation has unique requirements and problems which require unique solutions.

At The Growth Labs we have introduced the Corporate Innovation Program that will engage large corporations with startups and technology lead solutions to 'embrace' innovation in all aspects of your business. Get in touch to know more.