clair075

My good friend Paul Hobcraft wrote a nice piece recently about how corporations seem to experience innovation. He compared it to the game of snakes and ladders.  In this country (the US) we recognize it as chutes and ladders, a game that allows a player to progress quickly if they land on a ladder, and regress quickly if they land on a chute.  Paul notes that corporate innovation seems to reflect this experience, sometimes rapidly progressing, then just as rapidly relapsing.  He notes that the game, which he calls Snakes and Ladders, has no strategy. It's simply based on luck.  And to some extent he is making the claim, indirectly, that corporate innovation is not based on strategy, but on luck. I'd like to take his claim, such as it is, and extend it by noting that many commentators describe luck as when preparation meets opportunity.  Seneca, a Roman philosopher, was the first to suggest that luck is simply the intersection of preparation and opportunity....

Accenture has recently published an innovation survey of 500 executives in the US.  I'm particularly partial to portions of this survey because the authors identify a real and growing problem - the gap between what executives want from innovation, and the organization's ability to deliver. By now everyone knows that innovation is a top three priority for executives.  That's not news.  You'd have to be a monopolist or simply crazy to suggest as a senior executive that innovation isn't one of your priorities.  But saying that innovation is important doesn't mean it will get funded, get prioritized and get done.  The Accenture article goes to great lengths to note that "US executives are unrealistic in believing they have the capabilities they need to achieve their bold innovation goals".  Ouch. The authors go on to suggest that "a significant gap exists between what companies want to do in the area of innovation and what they are able to do".  ...

Henry Ford is perhaps one of the most well-known innovators in the US.  After all, it was his mass production line that helped people make the shift from horses or high cost / low quality automobiles to a reliable, affordable car - the Model T.  Ford wasn't the first to manufacture a car, but he was the first to realize the power of a low-cost, reliable automobile.  Strange then, that his position in the automobile industry was usurped only a few years later. Ford perfected a process by which he determined the model, the shape, the size and especially the color of the automobile.  "Any color as long as it's black" was his motto.  And when people did not have cars, the allure of a car, even if it did not have many options, was appealing.  Under pressure, Ford introduced the model A as an upgrade from the model T, but Ford wasn't interested in creating a range of alternatives, of introducing a number of options.  Ford was a synthesizer and a manufacturin...

I've thought for a while now that we are on the brink of something big.  That innovation will finally reach a tipping point, and like Europe in the Renaissance we'll finally leave the "dark ages" and innovation will flourish everywhere.  Right now I believe that for many corporations, innovation is a mystery that seems to promise what we think impossible:  more revenue, more profit, more market share at little cost.  Who can blame people for being suspicious of a perpetual motion machine, when they've been assured that physics tells us it's impossible? In a few years, a decade at the most, we'll look back at this point in the evolution of innovation as an activity, a tool and a strategy and wonder:  what were they thinking?  When the tipping point occurs, innovation will spread like wildfire, because finally all of the frameworks will be in place, finally corporate cultures will stop resisting, finally people will have the skills and time they need.  W...