It is time for an innovation reset

I’ve had “innovation” in my title and job description for more than ten years, and I still find myself wanting to better establish what innovation really means and how to scale an innovation system within organizations. My passion is to establish a system that delights consumers and organizations. A system that establishes business modeling as a leadership competency and capability. I don't frankly care if we call it innovation. However, several recent conversations have challenged me to articulate a clearer and more meaningful direction of what it means and how to do it.?

In the first conversation, a group of external colleagues discussed their organizational struggle to define and get clarity around “innovation.” Someone said that “everyone,” from teammates to end users, needs clarity around the word. I pushed back on this idea. I don’t think that the people we serve give two cares about our definition of innovation. They care about how we help them achieve their goals. Isn't that the reality and purpose of why innovation exists?

Earlier this week, in a discussion with two friends in executive search, they shared that the term “innovation” just doesn’t have a lot of energy around it in the market. Despite reports that CEOs see innovation as a vital for their companies’ futures, organizations today aren’t looking to create innovation roles in the way they once did. Where is the disconnect? I suspect this is because of unmet expectations and lack luster impact. As Steve Blank writes, many innovation initiatives have actually just been innovation theater. It is easy to see how the term has lost its appeal and often any meaning at all.

If “innovation” can mean anything bright and shiny, then organizations can’t create strategic impact or even a strategy to get there. The most important thing an innovator can do is design and deploy a system that measurably produces outcomes that consumers and companies love. That, in effect, moves us away from the term and titles of innovation toward something far more impactful.

Jeff Bezos once said, “The only thing that's disruptive is?customer adoption.” Setting aside my contention with the pursuit of “disruption,” Bezos highlights the way that Amazon centers on ?their customer in defining innovation. A while back, I had an email exchange with Scott D. Anthony and he said, paraphrasing, that “innovation” is something new and valuable to the consumer. Again, this definition gets us closer to the understanding that “innovation” is about the people we serve. ??

I believe if we sit around and wordsmith a definition, we can often lose sight of the fact that innovation exists to serve the consumer and the company. Innovation is only truly defined by what it delivers to the consumer or company. Clay Christensen et al., would call that the Customer Benefit Metric. My good friends Bennett Blank Roy Rosin and I refer to it as the Love Metric. In short, the Love Metric asks the question, “What would you love as the outcome of our innovation?”

Perhaps we need an industry reset on this term. We can each start by asking our consumers – from the c-suite to the customer to the community – what are they struggling with? what progress are they trying to make? what new outcomes would they love? What would a successful “innovation” mean to them? Those answers will help your organization define and clarify innovation because they elicit measurable expectations. You can define “innovation” for your organization when you’re able to describe the desired outcomes for your customers, consumers and company.

Great innovators, in my opinion, in Alexander Osterwalder framework, deliver business models that are more desirable, feasible, viable and adaptable. Innovation can effectively get delivered via a system with language, tools, and methods that are scalable. Impactful innovators renovate and create new business models to enable better and measurable value for consumers, customers, and companies. Lets stop worrying so much about the term innovation and instead get relentlessly focused on delivering value for consumers, customers, and the company.