When Innovation Is a Bad Thing
1-Why we resist to change?
2-When resistance to change is a good thing?
3-Why Innovation seems so hard sometimes?
4-Why sometimes we have a blurred vision to identify threatening disruptive innovations raising in the horizon?
Answer 1: We feel comfortable with the known and the opposite with the unknown. At the start innovation introduces a lot of new things to learn and a huge potential for failures. By the way, an true innovator does not see failures. He sees lessons.
Answer 2: Considering the Answer 1, which one do you think yields the best results in efficiency? The conventional or the innovative?
Answer 3: Answer 1 + 2.
Answer 4: At the start, innovation seems inferior to the mainstream technology. Decisions in favor of a disruptive technology jeopardizes everything achieved so far which has brought us to the leadership position. I like to say that "the comfort of a leading position holds the seeds of the downfall".
Innovation has changed from "a nice to have" to "an essential to exist". It should no longer be a R&D primary responsibility and become a value integrated into the culture of the company. In other words, everybody should develop a Innovation Mindset. But don′t be fooled by false expectations. It is easier said than done. The energy required to push the innovation (new ideas) through the KUS cycle (know, use and scale) is a hard path to go through. It requires grit, persistence, patience, resilience. If it surpass all the obstacles then it will receive the crown of the "de facto standard" in the field. Just to get surpassed afterwards by another innovation aspiring for the same title.
Once I created a provocative quote "Innovation is inefficient and Efficiency is retrograde" which sounds dumb, contradictory or paradoxical. I hope with this explanation you agree with me about that.
Ricardo Barreto Pereira