Innovation Mistakes

Bruce Nussbaum writes on the top innovation mistakes companies make in trying drive innovation in their enterprise. From his Business Week article:

"In no particular order—except No. 1 which is by far the worst mistake made most often with the most impact.

1-CEO sloth. There’s no pretty word for failure to focus on innovation by top management. Every major innovation index, including the new one coming out by Business Week in 08, shows significantly higher rates of return for companies that innovate. Yet CEO’s consistently mouth the word without providing the leadership and resources to make it happen. CEOs need to make the time to lead the  innovation movement in their companies.

2- Adding, not transforming. Most corporations today will allow innovation to be added to their structure. They will add a new innovation pipeline, a new social networking process, a new customer focus group, a new product or service. But companies usually don't scale or leverage the innovation to transform the entire corporate culture--so the innovation remains isolated. In the end, the old pushes back and erodes the new, the best talent leaves, and managers wonder why innovation doesn't work.

3- Choosing Metrics over talent. You must run a global corporation with a system of metrics in place. But measuring efficiency doesn't make a company creative. You need talented people for that. Creative talent is rare in business culture. B-Schools are only beginning to produce them. Getting your efficiency metrics grid down is critical to success but doesn't guarantee it anymore. Swimming in the global talent pool to get creative people for your company is just as critical to success today.

4- Failing to use design thinking strategically. Most companies employ innovation and design consultancies at the midlevel to foster culture change. That underestimates the power of design thinking to guide companies through this unusual period of constant and unexpected change. Innovation consultants and coaches should be used at the top of the executive pyramid.

5- Underestimating Crisis. We don't live in a world of change, we live in a world of crisis. It's "change" on steroids" and its impact on us is greater than at any other time in a century. We are living through an energy crisis, a technology crisis, a political crisis, an economic crisis, a food crisis, a demographic crisis, a terrorist crisis--all overlapping and happening at the same time. How to manage in constant crisis mode is the critical management problem of our era."

I think these are all important points.  Of particular interest to me is the notion of adding NOT transforming.   Time and time again, I've seen companies thinking if they just add this team,  this function this organization, without the commitment to support then integrate these functions into the core organization, they are blowing it!  Also, don't incorporate a function too early in the change management lifecycle... all the hard work you've put into driving change will get lost in the contextual work that that particular team is undertaking.

Bruce's comments on creative people very much resonate with mine.

Also the failure to use design thinking is a critical flaw of many organizations.  In some ways SAP does this correctly.  SAP's Design Services Team (DST), a group dedicated to design thinking reports into the Office of the CEO.   The DST is involved in driving design thinking at many levels of the organization, including the top!