INNOVATE OR DIE

Many books have been written about this issue. The need to continuously innovate is now part of any business conversation. Creativity and innovation are the new buzzwords. It is a settled reality that a business must innovate to evolve.

In this new ocean awash with data only those who can innovate are going to evolve and find a way to crawl on to dry land.

In reality all businesses from start-ups to giants must now think like entrepreneurs. They must become Intrapreneurs by thinking and acting like the entrepreneur for whom innovation is their reason for being.

Innovation is defined as the creation of a new device or process resulting from study and experimentation, or the introduction of a new process or device with which consumers are not familiar. Peter Drucker, the dean of management thinkers, defined innovation as “the specific instrument of entrepreneurship.”
My favorite definition is from an anonymous source, “Innovation is the ability to see change as an opportunity – not a threat.”

What is the difference between invention and innovation? Innovation happens when you figure out how to make money from an invention.

Does innovative thinking have to always be associated with making money? Not in my opinion, spreading an invention so that it does the most good for the most people counts as innovation.

Can anyone innovate? Probably not, but more can innovate than think they can.
Can we innovate on purpose? Businesses must innovate, so they must do so intentionally. Businesses are composed of people. Business people believe that innovation is just another business function and consider it a management process that requires specific tools, rules, and discipline.  A good first step.

How does anyone begin to think about intentional innovation? For innovation to occur, something more than the generation of a creative idea or insight is required: the creative idea or insight must be put into action to make a genuine difference to the old ways of doing things.

In 1942 an Austrian economist by the name of Joseph Schumpeter, living in the United States, published a book in which he coined the phrase “creative destruction.” In essence what he meant was that if a company fails to operate in a climate of constant reinvention, then it will be replaced by more innovative competitors.

3M was once on the brink of disaster as a mining company. Apple was so broke after Jobs left it needed an investment of $150m from Microsoft its arch-rival. Today 3M and Apple thrive because they innovated and reinvented themselves. By the way whatever happened to the Palm Pilot? They innovated once.

We are in a different era now. Peter Drucker, who died in 2005 examined how humans are organized—in business, government and the nonprofit world. He predicted the emergence of the information society with its necessity of lifelong learning. In 1959, Drucker coined the term knowledge worker.

We are in a new era. Call it the post-technology era, where technology is so prevalent it is now like the air we breathe. Innovation through intrapreneurship in this era has a new sense of urgency since technology is available to all. Large manufacturers can no longer count on having an edge because they have the physical plant, employees and infrastructure. Those with 3D printers are nipping at their heels and innovating on the fly. The big boys must evolve and innovate to compete.

Innovation can take place at all levels. Take as an example the remarkable work of William Edwards Deming, an American who died in 1995. He is a hero in Japan. His work is still little known in his home country. He was asked by General MacArthur go to Japan in 1950 to help rebuild their industry after WWII. He taught top management how to improve design, service, product quality, testing and sales through global markets since there was no Japanese market. How did he do this? By the innovative application of statistical methods. After his stint in Japan, he returned home American manufacturers did not listen to him until it was almost too late.

Innovation and intrapreneurship needs to be a part of your corporate culture. A good place to start is by making it a part of every employee’s job description.

Innovation can be incremental as well as radical. Small improvements add up to transformative innovation. Allowing employees to take time to think up new ideas has proved to be successful in larger companies. Failure should be tolerated because as we know Edison thought of failures as just ideas that did not work - on the way to finding the one that did. Post-It-Notes came from that culture.

There’s failure and then there is Fat Dumb and Happy. Kodak invented the digital camera and left it on the back shelf to protect its film business. The lesson here? Intrapreneurs have to be realistic and skeptical, and this means asking questions.

3M and Apple were literally faced with the ‘innovate or die’ scenario. They had to innovate. Fortunately 3M listened to the two guys in their skunk works and Apple had the innovation genius of our time waiting in the wings.
You may not be that lucky, so innovate on purpose. Make it a part of your culture of continuous innovation. And if you are already successful remember that Bill Gates tells us that “success is a lousy teacher.”

CREATE A CULTURE OF CONTINUOUS INNOVATION