A few weeks ago I spoke to a high level manager in a financial institution. We talked about his (truly) impressive activities in the field of innovation, and then he surprised me somewhat by saying: “In 2009 we plan to freeze innovation activities.”
Since the company is not a client of ours, I wasn’t directly affected by this decision, but still, I was curious to understand what stood behind it. Another victim of “the Situation”, I said to myself, but to my surprise he went on to explain: “We have so many good ideas now that we need to pause with innovation and focus on implementation.”
This approach is, in my eyes, a symptom of one of the biggest and most common misconceptions in the field; that innovation is all about coming up with ideas of what to do (products, services, whatever it is you do). The corollary is, obviously, that once you have these ideas you don’t need to be bothered with innovation any longer, all you need is to “just” implement.
The recent cancellation of Columbia University’s planned December session of its Executive Education course, “INNOVATION AND MARKETING“, came as no surprise.It is common wisdom in the business world that in times of recession, one must first cut the Training budget and then the Innovation budget.So this course received a double-whammy.
This phenomenon is quite logical. Innovation’s ultimate goal in any organization is to spur growth.In a period when growth is pretty much out of the question, investment in innovation seems capricious.Companies need to become more insular, stop the bleeding, cut the “luxuries” they have become accustomed to in times of plenty, and weather the storm.Not to mention the shareholders breathing down the Board’s neck to show some sort of profit margin, even if it means letting go a few hundred or thousand “salaries” or “headcount” that they will inevitably rehire a few months later once the R-word has passed.
Last week I had a conversation with a VP of the local office of an international ad agency in Europe. The topic was, no surprise, “the situation”. We started with some obvious observations such as:
a. Everyone is worried
b. No one knows what will happen
c. Their CEO had just emailed to stop all expenses immediately so they don’t know if they will be allowed to engage in a project
d. Next year all their clients will probably advertise less, so they are afraid that billings will drop and they will have to fire people.
But then we moved on to some other points, some obvious as well and some less (to me, at least) about the opportunities (no cynicism, this time) inherent in the crisis: Continue reading ‘Innovation and “the situation”’
Ok, so I’m not looking for one just at the moment - but I’m pretty sure that in no less than three years, the job of innovation manager will be just as acceptable and desirable as that of marketing manager, product development manager and sales manager.
Even today, I personally know 15 innovation managers, working in a variety of companies and organizations – the title on their business cards actually reads “Innovation Manager”. It’s amazing, isn’t it?
So, how exactly are we killing ideas? Relax - We all carry the bug, and each of us has heard the voice of the naughty kid inside that pops up every time we hear a new idea and gets us to say: “What?! We’ve tried that idea already and it didn’t work!”
Even if we’re creative types, we sometimes can’t stop ourselves from uttering: “Yes, but it’ll never work.”
Even if we’re patient and open-minded managers, at some point we’re likely to find the following sentence escape from our mouths: “It doesn’t fit into our current set of priorities.”
We’re all murderers; okay, that’s not a nice word. We’re all idea-killers. Perhaps it’s better that way. Otherwise, we’d be drowning in a swamp of new ideas that don’t provide a sound basis from which we can progress .
Last week I visited MSR - The Israel Center for Medical Simulation –in the Sheba Medical Center near Tel Aviv, and met with Dr. Amitai Ziv who heads it. We talked about innovation and simulation and possibilities for cooperation, and following the meeting, Amitai referred me to a recent interview (published in the McKinsey Quarterly, March 2008) with Delos “Toby” Cosgrove, CEO of the Cleveland Clinic, apparently one of the leading and innovative medical institutions in the US.
The interview’s title was “Innovation in health care”, and indeed innovation was the central theme. Dr. Cosgrove mentioned three “seismic shifts” (his expression) in health care, on which Cleveland Clinic was taking the lead. What struck me about them was, more than anything, how these three trends, touted as the absolute cutting edge of novelty, were exactly what any grandmother with common sense would probably have recommended. Please judge for yourself: Continue reading ‘Your grandmother, the innovator, and second-order innovation’
A few weeks ago I spoke to a high level manager in a financial institution. We talked about his (truly) impressive activities in the field of innovation, and then he surprised me somewhat by saying: “In 2009 we plan to freeze innovation activities.”
