Today we’re taking a look at what, in recent years, has become the mantra of entrepreneurial culture in the United States and around the world: innovation. And for most of us innovation is an unruly term, and may even prompt a fair amount of eye rolls in meetings. But it shouldn’t. It’s just shorthand for developing adaptive strategies that will grow your business or organization. And creating a plan for your company or team isn’t easy.
From the Harvard Business Review:
Too frequently, companies decide what they’re going to do before determining why they’re going to do it. That’s challenging, because developing innovations that have a lasting impact requires going beyond doing one single thing. Improving innovation is a system-level issue, requiring a coherent and consistent set of organizational interventions. To begin to determine what set of interventions makes the most sense for your company, first you need to step back and answer a fundamental question: What problem does innovation need to solve?
And that might be a tough question to answer, it may turn out the problem that needs solving is one created by success as Jill Lepore points out:
In his 1997 book, “The Innovator’s Dilemma,” [Christensen] argued that, very often, it isn’t because their executives made bad decisions but because they made good decisions, the same kind of good decisions that had made those companies successful for decades. (The “innovator’s dilemma” is that “doing the right thing is the wrong thing.”)
That may sound complicated, but it isn’t. Take, for example, the story of Kodak. George Eastman developed an empire on film that allowed him early market penetration and industry dominance that lasted nearly a century. But that success also left future executives dependent on the company’s original course.
From the New York Times:
Once a household name as big in its day as Apple and Microsoft have been for later generations, Kodak was part of everyday life, its film — sold in a yellow box — recording births, vacations, weddings. And then Kodak became a cautionary tale about what happens when a tech company is slow to change.
Unable to anticipate or capitalize on the digital revolution, Kodak generates most of its revenue from selling off valuable patents at the behest of private equity barons. Because of their success they failed to adapt and innovate. Like Blockbuster or AOL, fundamental changes in technology eroded Kodak’s ability to maintain a leading position in their industry.
But if someone or a team of people had been willing to make the tough calls and fight through the “innovator’s dilemma” things may have been different. From Business Insider:
[Steve] Jobs had a daunting task ahead of him, but he wasn’t afraid to make difficult decisions to get the company back on track. Cutting costly projects like Newton and aligning with known-competitor Microsoft were controversial decisions that showed Jobs’ authority, confidence, and smarts.
We forget that innovation can also mean shrewd business decisions and aggressive management. Taking a cash infusion from Microsoft wasn’t a problem for Jobs because he knew exactly why he was resurrecting Apple. Simply put, he wanted to deliver beautiful products to consumers that would make their lives better. And nothing, past successes or failures, was going to stop that.
