Innovating Innovation. David Morey

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      Successful innovation demands a clear vision—a sharp definition—of success. We’ve all seen those blooper reels where the heroic wide receiver takes the ball over the goal line—only to discover that he has run in the wrong direction. You must define the correct goal line for your team. You must tell them what it looks like. You must point them toward it.

      Do not edit the work of the team. Just keep them pointed the right way. Every effort they make must be made with the same “end” in mind—success—and performance must be judged by metrics that count how much closer the organization is to the correct goal line.

      Call it “destination planning.” If an innovation campaign delivers a win, how will everyone know? What are the metrics of this final success and the successes along the way? By what date must success and each intermediate success be delivered? How will key constituents of this innovation relate to each success?

      To succeed, each definition must describe how each stakeholder group will think, feel, and behave differently because of each success. “Success” is a sweet and smooth term. Make it sweet and granular by defining success in the most specific and meaningful terms possible—for the organization, for your customers, and for individuals. The context is simple: “If we achieve all our goals over the next twenty-four to thirty-six months, what will our success look and feel like…for us and all our key constituents?”

      Write your own answers to these fundamentally important strategic questions:

      • What business are we in now—and what business, or businesses, will we be in because of successfully innovating and transforming our company?

      • What will be the metrics of our innovation success? For various aspects of the business? For key individuals?

      • How will our constituents—employees, management, stakeholders, customers, business media, competitors—think, feel, and behave differently because of our innovation success?

      • What will a “battlefield map” look like for us? What, in terms of innovation, are key competitive threats? What are transformational opportunities? What quick gains can be found to generate business momentum?

      • When are the key milestones over the next twenty-four to thirty-six months? What is the “By When?” of this innovation campaign?

      Stand on the Shoulders of Innovation Giants

      So, I said it. Innovation is not a solo endeavor. Below is a hand-selected sampling of strategic questions and answers from other thinkers about innovation. I am not saying that these are essential to everyone all the time, but they are some of my favorites. Steal what works for you.

      In Innovation and Entrepreneurship (1985), Peter Drucker argues that consumer values and customer values are at the heart of innovative entrepreneurship. He advises entrepreneurial innovators to combine customer/consumer values with these key “sources for innovation opportunity”:

      • Unexpected events.

      • Incongruities between the expected and the actual.

      • New process requirements.

      • Unanticipated changes in industry or market structure.

      • Demographic changes.

      • Changes in perception, mood, or meaning, and new knowledge.

      No entrepreneurial innovator can afford not to read every word written by Clayton Christensen, beginning with those in The Innovator’s Dilemma: Why New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail (1997). This Harvard professor argues that even companies that do everything right can fail in their efforts to control and succeed in their markets. Nevertheless, key to success is what he terms “disruptive innovation”—innovation that does not merely add something new to a market, but does something completely unexpected. When you accomplish this, your product does not merely accompany those of your competitors, it displaces and replaces them. In Seeing What’s Next (2004), Christensen offers a pragmatic three-part innovation model:

      • First, predict changes in the industry.

      • Second, understand the competition and the difficulties they may face.

      • Third, determine a company’s longevity.

      In his 2016 Competing Against Luck, Christensen disrupts Drucker by arguing that disruptive innovation is not so much about predicting what the customer wants now and will want next, but rather understanding what jobs customers hold now and will hold in the future. The predictive “Jobs to Be Done” structure, Christensen claims, underpins the success of such companies as Amazon, Uber, Airbnb, Chobani, and many others.

      In The Myths of Innovation (2007), Scott Berkun outlines ten innovation myths that demand to be disruptively rethought. They are of such linear and exponential value I will devote the final words of this chapter to him:

      • The myth of epiphany—because all ideas come from other ideas, and not all ideas make for success.

      • The myth that we know history—given that history is often shaped to fit how we want to see the present.

      • The myth of a method—arguing not everything is within our control, and failure happens even if everything is done right.

      • The myth we love new ideas—because conservatism often prevails.

      • The myth of the lone inventor—given that innovation does not happen in isolation, but rather with the collaboration of teachers, friends, teammates.

      • The myth that good ideas are rare—because we are in many ways built for creativity that must be nurtured.

      • The myth that your boss knows more than you do—arguing bad bosses focus on conformity, while good ones empower innovation.

      • The myth that the best idea wins—given that marketing, politics and other factors help determine what idea succeeds.

      • The myth that problems are less interesting than solutions—because a creator must focus on the problem to find solution.

      • The myth that innovation is always good—pointing out that all inventions and innovations have caused good for some and bad for others.

      CHAPTER THREE

      Build Workshops, Not Laboratories

      Mozart pisses me off…

      —Billy Joel

      One of the late twentieth century’s greatest musical performers, composers, and songwriters admits openly that his own creativity came earlier in life and flowed forth in fits and starts, with titanic phases of prolific originality and, since his 1993 release of his last album, River of Dreams, far less frequent bursts of new songs.

      Born on May 9, 1949, and raised in blue-collar Hicksville, Long Island, Billy Joel began taking piano lessons at the age of four. Soon, he became less interested in reading other people’s musical notes or even in learning how to read music at all. He would become a six-time Grammy Award winner, a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and a 2013 Kennedy Center Honoree. He would sell more than 150 million records worldwide. And he began by improvising СКАЧАТЬ