clair075

Over the last few weeks I've been working with a client that is struggling to fully implement a new strategy that introduces innovation as an important component of day to day operations.  The company has a strong executional culture and has been successful in the past, but recognizes the need to do more innovation and more consistently.  As you might think, I've been working with them on their rewards, motivations, language, communication and other factors that build or sustain culture, trying to shift corporate thinking to embrace more innovation.  What's become apparent for me, one of those "ah-ha" moments, is that culture has different incarnations, and each must be changed for innovation to be successfully grafted into an existing culture. Cultural Incarnations I saw incarnations but we could call the different aspects of culture almost anything - faces, personalities or other descriptors.  Let's examine a few and talk about what's valuable and import...

There's an old joke about perspective and laziness I love and have used before on this blog, because it illustrates many of the challenges (and opportunities) of corporate innovation.  The joke goes that a young man steps out of a bar, and spies another person, obviously drunk, peering intently at the sidewalk under a street lamp.  Curious, the guy just leaving the bar goes over to the drunk and asks "what are you doing?"  The drunk answers "I'm looking for my keys".  The first guy decides to help and scans the area around the light post, but can't find any keys.  "Are you sure you lost them here?" he says to the drunk. "No" says the drunk, pointing at a dark alley.  "I lost them over there I think".  The sober guy, frustrated, says "well, why are you looking over here?".  The drunk replies, "because the light is better".  This analogy aligns so well to what corporate America does when it comes to a focus...

Exploiting and exploring are two terms my good friend Paul Hobcraft uses to delineate the activities most corporations SHOULD be conducting every day.  Exploiting existing models, processes, markets and frameworks to obtain all of the available revenue and profit possible.  This concept of exploiting existing models and existing reality is something that today's corporation is relatively good at doing, if not completely optimized to do. Exploring is a completely different matter, because exploring requires looking outside or beyond existing markets, customers, needs and frameworks.  Exploring means ignoring or rejecting existing competencies and realities to discover some new opportunity, challenge or need, or introduce some completely new product, service or model.  This side of the equation is typically ignored, because it conflicts with optimal, efficient exploitation, when in fact it should simply precede it. A brief history lesson The idea of a marriage between...

For years people have debated the reasons why some companies innovate and others don't.  To some extent, the business models and corporate strategies dictate where and how much innovation is done.  For example, when I worked at Texas Instruments, the strategy was to drive costs out of products that other firms created.  No one knew better how to drive the costs out of the manufacturing process for DRAM than TI.  Yet, within the DRAM and microprocessor markets and some other product lines, there was very little product innovation.  We created very little that was new, preferring instead to drive out costs once someone else had established the market.  The folks in Houston who were working on DSPs changed that model, and arguably TI became a product innovator because of DSP.  But much of the strategy and business model that TI had in place limited innovation, on purpose. Other factors have included the state of the industry, the amount of regulation, the...

Lately I've worked with or encountered a number of corporate clients who are trying desperately to innovate.  Their executives and management teams recognize the importance of innovation, and even include innovation as top three priorities or as a component of the annual strategy.  What's worse, unlike in the past, executives are starting to demand action on innovation, rather than simply use it as a speaking point or throw-away line.  So, mid and senior level managers are starting to wonder, how, exactly, can we "do" innovation and keep the everyday activities and "business as usual" processes running effectively?  Especially in an organization where the vast majority of people are already working 50 hours a week, and spend the majority of that time in back to back meetings. I've written before but it bears repeating, innovation, that is, thinking up, designing and creating something new and different that drives value for customers, isn't going to ...

I've written before (and often) about challenges around clarity and communication introduce difficulty when corporations try to create new products and services.  Notice that for a blog about innovation, I didn't use the "i" word in the sentence above.  That's because I think corporations confuse the ends from the means, and in doing so create unnecessary barriers to creating valuable products and services. First, let's get our thinking straight, because clarity and consistency matter.  In descending order of importance, executives want profitability, cost control, revenue growth and product differentiation. Many are very good at cost control and will accept profitability achieved by decreasing costs in the face of flat revenues.  A real win increases revenues while holding costs flat.  Revenue and corresponding profit growth typically come from gaining more business from existing and new customers from existing products, or introducing new products and servic...