This post is a sequel to the the previous post titled “Innovation is not about ideas, but about execution!“, here are a few other thoughts, insights and learnings about Innovation.
1. The “central innovation team” myth: Innovation in an organization cannot be the responsibility of just a central team. Every group and every individual needs to do everyday things in an innovative manner. Every leader should take responsibility and ownership for innovation, and not just delegate to the central team. Every leader should ask himself / herself on looking back in time: Did I do enough to influence a culture of innovation?
2. The “Return on Investment” myth: It’s very interesting how many people have the expectation that there should be a “Return on Investment” (ROI) for what you spend on innovation. This is like expecting an ROI for excellence, or quality – rather absurd. Excellence and quality of deliverables are hygiene and non-negotiable factors. Similarly, innovation needs to be regarded as the end in itself. Innovation is its own reward. Organizations who seek to have a target “ROI” on innovation initiatives will never succeed.
3. Collaborative Innovation Trends:The days of going solo are fast receding. Whether individuals or organizations, innovation flourishes with partnerships, alliances, and a collaborative effort. In my opinion, this trend towards collaborative innovation rather than solo innovation is being fuelled by the increasingly connected society, as well as the larger scale problems that innovation needs to address today.
4. Intersection Points: Steve Jobs once said that his focus throughout was on the intersection of technology and the humanities. One of the triggers and among the most fertile grounds for innovation are the intersection points across disciplines. One example I can think of is healthcare and IT. With mobile applications, wearable devices, EMR analytics, and several other application areas, I feel the next decade will be about a lot of innovation in healthcare due to intersection with IT.
5. Anticipate Disruptions, avoid a short term focus: Innovation initiatives necessarily need to be looked at with a longer horizon, for example a 3 year window. A short term focus, for example quarter on quarter based on market trends and expectations, will not work. For example, disruptive innovations often are contrary to what the “market trends” appear to indicate as customer requirements. Therefore large companies find it difficult to adapt to disruptive innovations. This is a paradox, since those disruptions can then overturn the entire industry. Here are some examples of disruptions happening across industries. For simplicity, I am using the “>” character to denote “disrupted by”
- Electric Bulbs > Tube lights > CFL > LED
- Floppy Disks > Hard Disks > Solid State Drives
- Mainframe > Workstations > Servers > Desktops > Laptops > Tablets/Smartphones
- Postal Mail > E-mail > Unified Messaging
- Nokia Symbian and RIM blackberry > iOS and Android (touch)
- Keyboard, mouse (Traditional I/O devices) > touch screens > Gesture interfaces?
- Print books, newspapers, magazines > digital versions
- Traditional (Fuel) vehicles > Electric vehicles
As the incumbents on the left of the “>” get disrupted by the innovations on the right of the “>” character, it is interesting how the short term focus and immediate business compulsions results in the disruptions being ignored, till they wipe out the incumbents.
To be continued …..
Thanks for reading. The views expressed are my own. I’d welcome your comments, feedback and suggestions below. You can also send me a mail at shantanu.paknikar@gmail.com or connect on Twitter: @spaknikar
shantanupaknikar 