Approaching Innovation

An excerpt adapted from Managing Innovation: Optimizing the Power of New Ideas, by David L. Francis, Ph.D and B. Kim Barnes

What Is Innovation?

Innovation means exploiting the potential benefits embedded in an idea that is new to you. The idea may be one that is extremely creative or one that is novel in a particular environment or application. Many people think that an innovation has to turn the world on its head—but innovations can also be small ideas. If there are enough of them, they take the organization forward.

Innovation is different from invention. An inventor discovers something and feels satisfied. An innovator may champion his or her own idea or an idea from others, and will not be satisfied until substantial benefits are gained.

Innovation is all about the exploitation of selected ideas—where the value added exceeds the costs incurred. Successful Innovation Management means finding more and better ideas than rivals, aligning them with strategy, and exploiting them for greater advantage.

Do Better vs. Do Different

There are basically two approaches to innovation—“do better” or incremental innovation and “do different” or radical innovation. Apple Computer launched an ad campaign a few years ago that grammarians hated, but that was highly descriptive of the company’s innovation orientation. The billboards and ads read, “Think Different” and featured well-known innovative thinkers such as Albert Einstein, the jazz legend, Miles Davis, and the photographer, Ansel Adams. Few would disagree that Apple continues to “think different” to this day.

Implementing a myriad of “do better” micro-innovations can be very worthwhile—Toyota considers that their world-class performance is based on tens of thousands of small ideas that are offered by employees throughout the organization.

It is important to find ways to explore both “do better” and “do different” innovation. Many organizations that are effective at “do better” innovation struggle when “do different” ideas are needed. Some “do-different” ideas yield much greater benefit than incremental innovations. From time to time there can be a breakthrough that re-writes the rules of the game. However, “do different” ideas are often riskier and usually more costly, at least in time and effort.

Chartered vs. Unchartered Innovations

Some organizations, departments, business units, or teams are chartered to create innovations. It is their responsibility. In many organizations, there are clear processes for moving chartered ideas into action. In organizations such as Toyota, everyone is chartered to contribute ideas and there is a clear process for submitting them and for exploiting them and a recognition system for the innovators whose ideas are implemented. In many organizations, however, there is no clear process for ideas that are unchartered (i.e., not expected or asked for, not part of the official role of the person or organization) to get a hearing or to move toward implementation. A few organizations, such as Dupont and Procter & Gamble, have experimented with “innovation offices” or committees where these ideas can be explored. Nevertheless, it is probable that a lot of potentially successful innovations walk out the company door at the end of the workday, still located between the ears of a potential innovator.

We live in a time when innovation has such importance that everyone working in a business or not-for-profit organization needs to be engaged in it—thinking about it, applying it, managing it. Innovation cycles are getting faster and technologies create vast new opportunity spaces. Increasingly, the world needs innovation to deal with vast, global issues like environmental protection and the social consequences of technology and globalization. Barnes & Conti is committed to helping clients to demystify the innovation process, build innovation-friendly environments, and acquire the practical skills to lead, manage and engage in innovation in every part of the organization.