In everyday innovation, everyone plays. Nobody is on the sidelines.
The daily onslaught of Google-news in my inbox suggests that CEO’s, CIO’s and other VIP’s in the corporate world are onto the secret: Making innovation an everyday occurrence instead of an R&D responsibility is critical to long-term survival.
The shift toward this mindset is big: Business hasn’t supported creativity the past few decades, unless their survival depends on the latest-greatest brand of soap, salsa, cell phone or boom-box.
But you can’t Six Sigma your way to everyday innovation.
Creating a culture of innovation doesn’t have to be painful. Balance between efficiency and creativity are key, so the pendulum shouldn’t swing too far in either direction.
There are simple strategies to make innovation an everyday occurrence throughout the entire company. These send a powerful message to employees that the other half of their brain (the one they use at home, on the weekends, with the families) is welcome in your workplace.
Follow the 3M pathway to everyday innovation (no, not the company):
Mindset & Message – Over the past decade, the number of new consumer products introduced in the U.S. grew 7%, while sales grew only about 3%. Research demonstrates almost no correlation between increased R&D spending (more products), and improvement in profits, and often not even between sales and revenue growth. This is largely due to a mindset of separation: Business compartmentalization and silos disconnect research from the front lines. Executives have to decide innovation is critical throughout the company, create a message to “brand it” for the business. Most importantly, it’s about building systems for experimentation that encourage innovation to take place in response to customer feedback, rather than the field-of-dreams approach.
Meeting culture – In the task-driven, fast-track environment of business today, there’s simply no room for “open innovation” (eg, the type that’s not scheduled on an off-site agenda). Meetings are all about fly-by status updates or troubleshooting a point of pain. Meetings to explore possibility have a very different structure, facilitation, and process than most meetings in business today. Get an expert to help overhaul your meetings so they support creative, innovative thinking, and watch the magic happen.
Metrics – What gets measured, gets results. A new Boston Consulting Group study reports that 63% of 1070 executives globally plan to increase innovation spending in the next year, 48% are not satisfied with the financial ROI in innovation, and 63% use “very few” innovation metrics – five or less. It's not easy to bring fresh thinking and creativity to an environment that mostly rewards and recognizes only what drops to the bottom line. It requires defining and recognizing successful activity through more upstream metrics, versus measuring success only from performance.
It’s time to get serious and make room for everyday innovation -- from the receptionist to the boardroom.
Otherwise you might just be outwitted sooner by those who did.