How much innovation energy does your bureaucracy have left?
One factor I've been considering for some time has to do with the power of a corporate bureaucracy to create or block change. On one hand, bureaucracies are good, in that they codify practices, principles and processes and allow people to get more done quickly as a unit than they might get done alone. Bureaucracies were created to allow people to scale concepts, inventions, products and ideas. However, any bureaucracy comes with a certain amount of baggage. That baggage is the inverse of the promise of the bureaucracy. These issues are exhibited in cultures that are resistant to change, processes that become too rigid when agility is required, limits on decision making and risk taking. In fact I think one could easily say that there are real strengths and real barriers to any bureaucracy, whether that bureaucracy is housed in a government agency - think the driver's license bureau - or a corporation. Where this exploration of the strengths and challenges of burea...