What's so hard about innovation?

The human species has done fairly well due to our creativity and problem solving capabilities. Yet, many established organisations find it challenging to improve their offering and renew their way of doing things. Moreover, and perhaps more alarmingly, on our quest to create a better future, we have created severe social and environmental problems that are now threatening that same future. So what is it that makes it challenging to innovate, and ultimately take on the challenges to create a truly better and sustainable future? What are the barriers to overcome in order to release the full potential for positive change through innovation?

After many years in different types of organisations and roles, I have observed a number of characteristics I believe are central in the understanding of innovation:

1. Innovation is future-oriented and risky. Even incremental innovation on well-defined challenges means improving or developing something new for the future. There is always some uncertainty about how that future will look, to what extent your innovation efforts will succeed. This means you need to deal systematically with uncertainty and risks to succeed consistently with innovation. To what extent is uncertainty embraced and risk taking rewarded in your organisation?

2. Radical innovation requires learning and change. If your ambitions are high, and you aim for radical innovations, you are not likely to have the knowledge, answers and perhaps even behaviours needed to succeed. This gap not only increases the feeling of uncertainty and risks, but also creates confusion and often resistance as a natural consequence. How well are you prepared for and tackling this feeling and behaviour as individual, team and organisation?

3. Innovation requires openness and collaboration. Great innovations are often a result of collaboration and cross-fertilisation across people with different backgrounds, perspectives and talents, and are normally executed through cross-functional teams. At the same time, most organisations are structured and managed to optimise efficiency based on functional specialisation and excellence. How much time are you expected to spend on team and cross-functional activities that could foster and drive great innovations in your organisation? To what extent do you collaborate externally, offering opportunities for new insights, ideas and perhaps even joint innovation opportunities?

4. Innovation needs investments. Innovation can happen by luck or coincidence, but normally requires dedication, patience and willingness to invest time and resources. How well does that fit with short-term growth and profit expectations typically set by management, owners and stock markets, and how well does innovation stack up against more short-term activities such as cost saving and sales initiatives? What is on top of the agenda of your organisation?

5. Innovation needs a meaningful purpose. A desire to earn more money is not a good starting point for innovation, as it does not provide any direction nor meaningful inspiration for creativity. Neither does an existing organisational setup, as it easily makes you more blind than open towards new needs and alternative solutions. On the other hand, if you have your main stakeholders and their needs at the centre of your innovation efforts, and people identify with and are passionate about them, you can create vast amounts of energy, drive and creativity. How purposeful and inspiring are the goals of your organisation and innovation efforts?

To me, these five points represent a baseline understanding of innovation. They also offer some ideas about how to start improving your innovation efforts, with support from better knowledge, understanding and relevant frameworks.

What are your reflections on the barriers for innovation, and how to manage them in order to turn them into opportunities?