Who Cares About Innovation?

First looks are usually deceiving.

Take our global approach to innovation, for example. By way of observation it seems as though the whole world is obsessed with innovation. Innovative products, innovative processes, innovative cultures, innovative ideas, innovative countries, innovative cities, innovative frameworks, innovative libraries, innovative … you get the idea. It sounds as though innovation is what keeps everyone up at night.

But, if first looks are truly usually deceiving, never have they been more deceiving then when it comes to innovation. Or more precisely about about how much we?—?all of us?—?care about innovation.

No One Really Cares About Innovation

If I’m right?—?and I do believe I am right about this one?—?namely, that most of us don’t really care about innovation, then that would explain why most innovative efforts fail. Like launching a new product. Well obviously, if you don’t care about it, it will likely fail, wouldn’t it? Of course it would.

So let’s take a look at what I like to call the Innovation-Care-Chain, comprised of all Innovation Stakeholders. At the outer extremities of the chain, we’ll find the Investors and the Customers.

The Innovation-Care-Chain: Investors → Board Members → Executives → Managers → Employees → Customers

If we travel along this chain, following the hierarchical direction of corporate authority, we would start the chain with the top-level stakeholders, namely the Investors. Next, come the Board Members, then the Executives, Managers and finally the Employees. At the end of the chain, we find the Customers?—?the end consumer of whatever the company produces via its Innovation Process.

Let’s travel down this Innovation-Care-Chain and let’s see who cares about Innovation.

Investors are about meeting their personal ROI goals.

Investors fork over the cash and they expect lots more cash in return. This one’s a no-brainer. Whether the investment is in the form of a round, whether the investment is based on their own personal savings, or whether the investment is stocks, the investor’s primary concern is multiplying their money, as soon as possible. A 10x fold return in 36-months or less would usually be deemed a success. Less might do. More would be even better. Bottom line here?—?the investor cares about their personal ROI andeverything else has to be ultimately tied to this goal. If innovation fits within this framework, fine, they’ll care about it, as long as it brings in the dough. If innovation means going straight against their ROI goals, then forget about innovation, “just show me the money”. It’s absolutely clear the investors do not care about innovation.

I’d love for an investor to prove me wrong here. But they won’t. Because they can’t.

Board members care about meeting investor goals.

Next up, those smart individuals who gather regularly around an expensive table to make critical decisions like firing and hiring CEOs. The Board Members. They care about the investors, don’t they? I mean, what is it that keeps these people up at night if not meeting investor expectations? Whether that means private or public investors, it matters less. What matters is that the Board is of one mind and one accord when it comes to decision making: “is this decision good for the investors or not?” When in doubt, the investors are asked about it and the investors will obviously ask “is this decision good for my personal investment or not”? To answer that, just go back up and read up on what Investors really care about. The Board really doesn’t care about innovation. Just like the Investors, they will care about it as long as it makes the Investors happy. If that means firing obnoxiously innovative CEOs, you know like that loser, Steve Jobs, who can’t shut up about new ideas and other blah blah blah, then so be it. Fire him. Who cares if he founded the company. Or if he’s a genius.

Executives care about meeting board goals.

Show me an executive who puts innovation first. No, seriously. Show me one. Leave a comment, and let’s discuss. Let’s make a list of them and create some sort of time capsule and stuff their names in there. They can’t be human. At least, they can’t be good executives. See, because a good executive, well?—?they just execute. That’s what executives do, they execute. Execute what? Board directives of course. The Board says jump, you do it and you do it well. Executives are all about efficiency. Executing efficiently. On rare occasions, they worry about effectiveness and they might question the thing they’re supposed to execute efficiently. They might be crazy enough to question the Board about the effectiveness of the decision. Yeah, that happens sometimes, but then all hell breaks loose. And that’s when CEOs get sacked. Peter Drucker famously talked about the most critical thing an Effective Executive can do, and that’s to contribute. The catch is that their contribution has to be aligned to their Board’s expectations. And we know what that means. Innovation becomes an afterthought at best.

Managers care about meeting executive goals.

Check your PDP. What’s your job as a Manager? Accomplishing Executive goals, of course. Yeah you get to set your own goals. But if they don’t align with your top executive’s goals, they won’t get approved. Get it? Whether you’re in sales or marketing or engineer or whatever. If your top executive within your division has committed to a set of goals to their Board, your job is to craft your goals in such a way as to align to their goals. You’re free to be as creative as you want and use all of your fine-tuned skills. As long as you stay on track and meet your boss’ executive goals. Whose goals have to trickle up to the Board and so one. You get the idea. So where does that leave innovation? Well not on your plate, obviously. If your goal is to launch a new initiative that would grow your division’s innovation premium but it would not be aligned with your executive directives, well then, just forget it about it, son. Move it right along and play ball. Executive ball.

Employees care about meeting management goals.

Hey bro, what do you care about? Code? Design? Good patterns? UX? Quality? Right, basically all of that. But, as long as that meets management goals. And if those goals means using that framework or that system or that process or turning that button blue, you do it. You turn that button blue. Even if all signs point to red, well too bad, you will go for blue, otherwise management will miss their goals, and that will piss off the executives who will miss theirs?—?and it’s just a big mess. So just stick with blue bro, don’t worry, I know your eyes will bleed. But go with it. And hey, make it snappy, ok? Because you have to enter your hours in that management timesheet. Don’t complain. Or you might need to enter the time you took to complain in that nasty sheet too. Comply, comply, comply. If you think that sounds tragic, what immense and opaque rock have you been living under? Let’s talk about it. I want the exact GPS coordinates of that rock.

Customers care about meeting their personal ROI goals.

C’mon, someone’s gotta care about innovation. Maybe it’s the customers. Right? They like innovative products, don’t they? Well, actually they care about getting the biggest bang for their buck, to be honest. Yeah the iPhone is nice and that Tesla is cool and all but as a customer, do they meet (or even exceed) my ROI expectations? In other words, as a customer, I’m really just an investor. Instead of investing in a company with stocks or cash up front, I become an investor of sorts, through my purchase. When you think about it, that’s how crowdfunding works. Think of Kickstarter for example. Are those backers up front customers or investors? Well, both. That’s how the Innovation-Care-Chain loops back. The Customer is actually an Investor and the Investor will end up a Customer. Investors who really believe in their investment and are happy with it?—?meaning they got their money back xFold?—?will be the first to sport the brand new shiny product and wear their “early adopters” badge of honour with glowing pride. The point here is that just like the Investors, the Customers don’t care about innovation?—?they care about a product that actually solves their problem in an elegant and beautiful way. A product they could identify with and a product that could become an integral part of their life. A product that will extend a part of themselves, just like a pair of shoes extends your feet and just like a pair of eye-glasses extends your eyes. Or just like a computing device extends your mind.

So Who Cares About Innovation?

Ah yes. Who indeed.

The loon. The crazy, stubborn, utterly useless managers. Utterly insane executives. The absolutely dumb, wildly speculative, literally idiotic-against-all-traditional-wisdom type investors. The nonsensical engineer who stays up at night chasing unicorns in some obscure assembly library. The designer who is drinking coffee at 3 AM for an extra boost while filling up their eight whiteboards with patterns that they think they’re like “this” close to connecting into a design the world has never, ever seen before. The ridiculous scientist who forgot to shower this week and ate nothing but crap for the past two days while being “this” close to some outta-this-world scientific breakthrough. The 2nd year University student who is just here for the summer internship but has been sleeping at the office this weekend because he just won’t give up on this one little problem they think would change “everything”. As in everything, everything. And then there’s that one guy and that one girl, and that other one, and that group there, and that team over there.

What do these weirdos all have in common? Other than being the only lonely loons to care about innovation, they all “do innovation” without being given permission. They all do it outside of the nicely traced borders of their 9-to-5ish job description. You know who I’m talking about. We all know who cares about innovation. We all know someone like that. And we all know none of them are doing their “real” jobs when “doing” innovation. We all know they really suck at obeying and suck even more at aligning with corporate goals that fit neatly into a nice, perfect square box, proudly branded with the company logo and titled “Corporate Strategy”. No, innovation can’t happen and shouldn’t happen in that box. It has to happen outside of that box, at all costs. It has to happen in spite of that box. Even if you stuff the word “innovation” in that box, it won’t work.

Who cares about innovation? No one really. No one rich, famous or important anyways. No one writing about.

PS. But for those of you who really care about innovation, even thought no one gives you permission to “do it”?—?I’m looking at you. KEEP DOING IT. Period. One day, it will pay off. Keep at it. The ENTIRE world is waiting to see what you’ve got it. Give it all you’ve got. We’re waiting…