Is Your Approach to Innovation Tanking Your Business?

How innovative is your company??

• Does it have an innovation culture?
• Is it innovation first?
• Has innovation vertically integrated all your departments?

Are you innovative? How about being supportive of the company culture, always taking an innovative first position, and making sure that every innovation node from HR to maintenance is connected??

Final question…how successful is your company versus your peer group??

As I talk with and meet frustrated CEOs, department heads, and employees, it seems that current business success—real-time business, if you will—is the biggest barrier to innovation. It is the key blocker of innovative ideas and in public companies, the Board’s major concern is spending, profit, and future focus.

You would think the opposite, no??

How could I possibly have a future? How would my business survive if innovation wasn’t driving all my decision-making, resource allocation, time, and focus?

Yet, someone needs to watch the ship…look out for icebergs…navigate the shoals…set the course. And ultimately, dock as promised. I may have been watching too many navy movies.

But who’s to say that you couldn’t get there quicker via a new course or find a? new dock en route? Of course, if you do, you better make sure that you deliver the goods promised; regardless of what you have planned for this new venture.?

And therein lies the rub…as they say.

Innovation is critical. The new route could be a game-changer, but you're done if you show up with empty cargo holds.

You see, the problem with everyone being about innovation is that it's a great soundbite and a big DUH. Of course, everyone needs to embrace it—NIH (Not Invented Here) syndrome needs to be eradicated. But if everyone is only thinking about innovation, who is keeping the lights on??

Too many companies chase innovation like shots of dopamine, jumping from idea to idea, never fully executing anything.

My friend and teacher GV is the master of innovation. His model is brilliant.?

To be truly successful, a company needs to have an:

• Innovation lead, anchored by a clear mission of driving the kind of innovation that will propel the company to success. Innovation has to be based on problem-solving and opportunity creation. Some fight this on the premise that it centralizes a function that should be decentralized. Again, yes, everyone needs to be innovative and embrace change as it comes, but if everyone is only being innovative, there will be no business. Think Apple. Someone has to sell the product and distribute it.
• A clear pipeline to feed the center from all over the company, anywhere, understanding that clear success goals are also necessary. And, of course, the center drives ideas as well. But once they feed the pipe…back to your deliverables.
• The Innovation center vets ideas, sets KPIs, evaluates the business case, and then hands off the best to the Implementation team (see below)…
• The Implementation team, the OPS center, the people whose job it is, on an ongoing basis, to keep the company (and all its tech and operations) well-oiled and running. You see, if they can’t make it work, it will never work. Do it outside, and it's a foreign body; we know what organisms do to viruses. When the Ops Team has it ready, they hand it off to…
• The Brand/Sales/Whatever team, the folks who do the business of the business. They have no time to develop. They can, though, pilot and implement. True success will come from doing both brilliantly.?

To make you feel better…

Arguably, it's all innovation—including the actual implementation. .I get that, and if that makes it easier to implement, go for it!

The bottom line is that innovative cultures—successful innovative cultures—understand the need to distribute the process for success.?

I have seen way too many companies swirl around. They lose money and great people. They totter on the brink of disaster and fail because they didn’t understand that successful innovation in enterprise companies is built on success, not failure. And yes, we all know that true innovation needs permission to fail…another great soundbite…but again, it must fail in a controlled environment before it hits the market and takes you down.?

Innovation keeps companies fresh and relevant…but it can also tank them if it gums up the work or bottlenecks the ongoing business and distracts from the mission.?

Innovation is not a panacea or a magic bullet, despite what some popular literature might have you believe.?

Like anything else that works—it needs to actually work.?

What’s your view?