Innovation is in our?Nature
Usually when a corporate magazine approaches me for an interview I don’t expect much to come of it. It’s a bit stupid I must confess as there are absolutely incredible corporate media. I was very pleasantly surprised when my discussion with Renzo Monti for LEMO’s Connected magazine came out well. I believe we cover some very important points: innovation is a very natural and simple phenomena, predicting the future is much less useful than having processes allowing fast deployment and constant trial and error. Last but not least: hunger for change is a sort of natural check and balance system to redistribute wealth. Full interview below.
Laurent Haug, could you give us your most general definition of the concept of innovation?
Innovation is a natural Darwinian phenomenon. For a project related to this subject, I consulted a biologist and have drawn striking parallels! Survival depends on the ability to adapt constantly, therefore to innovate. If you think of innovation as a phenomenon, you are faced with an ongoing Darwinian show.
Is this show a comedy, a drama or a tragedy?
A play in three acts. First, there is the initial, rising stage if we are talking about enterprise. You have to prove yourself, take risks, venture into the unknown. To me, this is the most interesting stage. After the rise, there follows consolidation, preserving power and status. Finally, there is fall: we get over confident, become blind and lose agility by wanting to preserve our comfort. We put on weight and we are overtaken by those who are faster! What is amazing in society is that all entities are at one of these three stages. You can observe this phenomenon at the level of countries, companies and even on an individual scale. At a geopolitical level, China and Korea are rising, USA have reached the end of domination and have started falling, France, Italy and Greece have been destroying themselves [Note: the interview was done in March, before Macron’s election].
So it is a tragedy indeed!
No, it isn’t, because it is cyclical. China had already been a great power in the past, before declining and now rising again. Nokia used to be a company considered untouchable, before dramatically declining with the emergence of smartphones. These cycles occur when we forget that it is taking risks that generates value. Risk is the foundation of innovation. In the world of technology, Microsoft is a good example. They went through a crisis starting in the mid-nineties, when the internet changed everything. They were overtaken by Apple and Google. Now they are coming back, because they have finished their decline. They have questioned themselves and are now ready for a new start. They managed to create fresh impetus, whereas Apple seems to be losing momentum.
How do you explain the decline of such strong companies?
Simply, because these companies are made up of human beings. It is hard to fight again for something that you have already conquered. Innovating is exhausting. You have to accept to live with uncertainty. The fact of not knowing where you will be in six months, whether the market will want to take what you are working on. It is hard to maintain the same intensity even when you have reached the top, never to rest, to continue the sleepless nights. Because this is what you need to do to create a revolutionary product! I think there is a certain logic in all this, just like in the theory of evolution. There is a regulation phenomenon. When you have a lot of resources, the hunger that drives your quest for more weakens. This leaves more space for the others and for redistribution of wealth.
Is innovation always closely associated with uncertainty?
Yes, uncertainty and risk go hand in hand with innovation, there is a strong link with change and survival. A person living in a country at war and hitting the road because his house is being bombed is innovative: he has no other choice but to reinvent his life, to start the future with a clean slate, risk everything all over again. In a way and through no fault of their own, refugees are entrepreneurs and innovators. A person who lands in New York with a single dollar in his pocket will have to innovate. This is how 65% of the top managers of US technology corporations are first or second generation immigrants. They often had no other choice but to build themselves a better future. A rich person, on the contrary, will tend to ask for help from the others to solve his problems, or write cheques to get rid of them.
Is their a typical innovator profile?
Scientists have described innovators as people fascinated by a problem that is impossible to solve. Walt Disney wanted to make people happy… Such a project will never be completed! It seems that you need to be motivated by an unattainable objective. Some want to solve impossible problems, such as peace on earth or hunger. Some others are motivated by personal failure, a particular psychological state, such as having experienced reject or lack of understanding and want to prove that they are valuable by accomplishments that will be recognized by the others. Steve Jobs and Larry Ellisson have both been adopted and maybe this was what contributed to taking them so far.
How about talent and genius?
Talent is not enough, there is nothing supernatural in innovating. When looking at the past, we always get the impression that things just couldn’t have possibly happened in a different way. Still, if you look at the career of someone like Steve Jobs, you can tell that his success was the result of hard work, extraordinary persistence, the capacity to select talented people as well as some good luck and timing. Hundreds of other people were making their own way simultaneously and they never became famous, because they didn’t succeed, not all the conditions were met. There is no clearly outlined destiny as such. There are daily new challenges, we invent our future together every day.
You say that innovation has nothing to do with the capacity of predicting the future. In the corporate world, isn’t anticipating future markets the key to success?
No, it isn’t and this is an essential point. Nobody can tell how things will actually happen. Intel’s founders could not know, when they started their processor business that 40 years later there would be iPhones! However, they could sense and contribute to profound, lasting changes and create products with enormous potential, which could be developed, adapted and integrated into a countless number of systems. But they could not know. Today’s technologies were almost unthinkable at the time, as well as the proportions that these technologies would take.
So, how can a company increase the chances of creating a revolutionary product without know- ing the future?
By implementing a constant, efficient process that will allow to develop products within short deadlines, based on the actual needs of the market. This is all very down-to-earth ! The aim is to generate ideas, collect them, sort them and make them happen as efficiently as possible. Apple or Google launch only 20% of the products they develop. Their archives are full of buried products! This is the culture of innovation. It is not about explaining that this or that product may change your life, but learning to accept and manage the risks, trying something new, observing, moving forward. Within a company, especially when business is going well, the unknown is perceived as a threat. What I am trying to make my audience understand is that the unknown must be regarded as something exciting.
You often describe the culture of innovation within a company as an “ecosystem”, yet another reference to nature. Can you explain this concept?
It is about building up and orienting all the in-house conditions for innovation to thrive. Talking to all the staff about what is going on in the world. Which are the up-and-coming technologies? How to change our way of working so that an idea can be launched faster on the market? How to identify within the company the competencies that will help to select the most pertinent ideas, to present them to the customers in the most complete way? Innovating means managing both sides of the funnel to move from 10,000 ideas to a product. It involves organizing one side of the funnel to get always more proposals, talents, means and the other side so that the product may have an impact. In order to make this system work, it is also necessary to develop closer relationships with your partners, customers, the media, intellectuals, influencers. To create a multifaceted, dynamic structure to shift from a market notion to a whole ecosystem.
You say that in order to innovate, we need to “protect the future from the past” and not the contrary. Still, can we protect anything from the past, without giving up on innovation?
This is the paradox. Companies often forget about their own DNA, this genetic code which made them become what they are today. Therefore, they should rediscover it, and awaken the culture of innovation. The founder of a company like LEMO innovated 70 years ago, spending days and nights in his kitchen building connectors! Today 1600 people should feel responsible for inventing the future, managing the risk factor, but not letting it become predominant. The further we go ahead, the more important it is in a way to return to the foundations. All human organizations can only exist as long as they have a role in society. The danger starts when we become self-referential which is now the case in certain parts of the world. When the main priority of a company becomes not leaving the comfort zone, it is the beginning of the end. This end may last quite a while, but this is how it starts. Only if you question yourself consistently can the success story continue.
Original story here.