Yesterday I posted a diagram of the barriers to, needs for and exemplars of an excellent innovation activity. I have based this diagram on surveys I have been involved in over the period 1999-2003 and ones I have found on the web since then. So why the duck? This morning I saw the latest whitepaper from Future Think which showed that, on a scale of 0-20, the total innovation capability score (self-assessed by 248 executives) is 8.3~ nearer to a duck (0) than 20. When we look at the reasons they are not much different from my diagram.
So why are we struggling to move onward and upward with a stream of exciting innovative offers that excite our existing customers and attract new ones?
One reason is, as I have said recently "innovation means change" and change is daunting. My post Innovative ways to change touches the apparent complexity of change within the organisation and intimates that we have plenty to address as we set out on a journey of change. Here we will look at innovation activities.
At the end of another post The last judgement~ innovation isn't easy is a diagram showing the top seven barriers to successful innovation and the sort of comments I hear from people who are hitting that barrier
1) Lack of ideas or access to potential products/services
"We are being told to innovate or die! Yet there is never any time to have, let alone write down, ideas or even to listen to other people's ideas! And anyway they are never very useful as they don't seem to fit the bill.""
2) Lack of commercialisation process
"We just get on with what needs to be done next. We are always up against it and never have time to have a fancy methodology"
3) Lack of entrepreneurial skills
"I just do as I am told; there is no prize for trying to be different here; I save that for the local youth club fundraising do's."
4) Lack of clear strategic direction
"In spite of a growth acceleration strategy we seem to kill any projects that promise to deliver it."
5) Lack of methods to manage and mitigate risk
"We sit down and discuss how difficult it will be and pick an easier route which means that stuff we offer tends to be more predictable for our bosses to approve."
6) Poor visibility of success or failure indicators
" I am never sure if we are doing the right things as we don't get much feedback. I just get reassigned to another project that is struggling and get on with it."
7) Limited spare capacity and resources to reassign
"Look we can't do the projects we already have without you coming up with bright ideas for some more. Lets get what we have to do done shall we?"
If you ask these same people what would make life better for them you get a list of needs with 4 needs getting a disproportionate number of votes. These priority needs are
1. Better processes for innovation work.
2. Better measurement of what is going on.
3. Stronger link between innovation and strategy.
4. Better handling of risk and more risk-taking.
If we distill out the essence of organisations regarded as innovative we find the top Exemplars are
1/ They have a disciplined design process
2/ They have a true team approach
3/ There is a clearly communicated and understandable strategic direction
4/ They have a bundle of Insights about there present and future customers and users.
From my perspective this other clear winning behaviours are centred on mastering the interactions between
Foresight
[Social] Networking Management
Technology Understanding
Organisational Process and Culture
And that duck... well the ripples before it reminded me of one of the Foresights we need to understand are the cultural megatrends that ripple down and eventually become microtrends that determine how well we innovate for our consumers. This diagram is a redraw of Nokia's Mega to Micro trends illustration.
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