Infographic: Recreating Your Company
It's an old story--a new company with a new product and a new way of looking at things dislodges established business that can't keep up. A few years later, this same company that so nimbly entered the market stops growing and starts falling prey to new competitors. Why is sustained growth so elusive? And why do some companies seem immune to this sort of cycle? The answer: the most successful companies understand that they need to continually recreate themselves by building innovation into their business models. I call this process Creativizing.
To illustrate this and provide you with a roadmap for Recreating Your Company, I've put together the below infographic.
Innovation is different from everything you do as a leader in three distinct ways. First, innovation happens in the future for which you currently have no data. In fact, one of the most common forms of resistance to innovation is excessive data collection because it stops your company from taking purposeful action. Second, innovation is a time-based form of value. That is it has a shelf life and goes sour like milk. So innovation has to happen within a specific window of opportunity. Third, innovation happens in cycles; not straight lines. Revolutionary innovations seldom occur in good times because the relative risk is high and the reward low. In a down economy innovation isn't your best friend...it's your only friend.
If you want to keep growing, I strongly urge you to make friends with innovation.
Jeff DeGraff is the Dean of Innovation: professor, author, speaker and advisor to hundreds of the top organizations in the world. You can learn more about his groundbreaking University of Michigan Certified Professional Innovator Certificate Program and Innovatrium Institute for Innovation at www.jeffdegraff.com/cpi and keynote speeches through BigSpeak Speakers Bureau.
opt.tech. at Aujan Coca-Cola Beverages Company (ACCBC)
9 年Innovation requires innovative approached... It has expiration,so deliver it promptly...
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9 年Interesting points about using creativity, getting people to do things differently, and diverse deep domain expertise to create momentum. Certainly aspects I have noticed to be important in large multi-stakeholder collaborative initiatives.
Deep-tech CEO | 2021 Colorado OEDIT Advanced Industries Early-Stage Capital and Retention Grant Recipient | 2014 SPIE Prism Award Winner For Photonics Innovation | B2B Commercialization Expert | MBA
9 年IMHO, your money shot statement is very early on your great infographic...although I am truly sorry that I am compelled to correct the grammatical and spelling issue: "you will have to forego many of your control based management practices to give your business the freedom it needs to grow". Sadly; good luck getting executive leaders to follow that advice! This management practice seems all to endemic to just about every innovative high technology start-up that I have ever been a part of. I think it is also probably why, according to most research I have read, that ~90% of technology start-ups fail. In a chapter entitled "The Leaders Dilemma" in a very worthwhile new book called "Superforecasting" by Philip Tetlock, the author discusses the leadership principles of a famous - famous if you like world military history - 19th century Prussian military leader (Moltke) who stated that: "No plan of operations extends with certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy's main strength." That statement will seem oddly familiar to you if you've ever heard of Mike Tyson. Anyway, Tetlock goes on to describe the seemingly counterintuitive leadership behavior of Eisenhower on D-Day and provides a related quote of George Patton: "Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity." Although you are probably surprised that the world's most famous military had that type of "lack of" command and control, there is a Moltke spirit in most good business organizations. 3M is well known for the following attitude: "We let our people know what we want them to accomplish. But - and it is a very big 'but' - we do not tell them how to achieve those goals." You don't get much more innovative than 3M.
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9 年Touche