Manage-Wise

Creativity and innovation

Most managers labour under the delusion that they can’t innovate where they work because they lack sufficient resources or support. They may also believe there is a gap between the competency required to innovate and the competencies they actually have in their workforce. Ironically, the major impediments to making innovation happen at work are not the absence of these institutional resources, but instead, their presence.

Consider for a moment that many of the most valuable biotech and dotcom start-ups of the last 10 years, like Google, were created in someone’s garage without the benefit of extensive capital. Similarly, consider the “open source” approach to innovation many large firms are now taking to license new technologies and applications from emerging firms and federations of smaller firms so that they can bring these to market faster. What an organisation lacks in terms of the scope and scale of its resources, it more than makes up for in its ability to maneuver in an agile way.

When the system becomes a handicap

In fact, the principal problem in most organisations isn’t their lack of new technology or expertise, but rather their inability to get through their own systems, particularly those designed to aid innovation. Ironically, many firms are innovative and don’t even know it. They have dozens of managers who routinely and successfully innovate by working the system to their advantage or flying under the radar. Because the institutionalised systems require people to avoid detection, these firms never harness their true potential.

Conversely, in firms, like WL Gore & Associates, where innovation is considered a democratic endeavour, something that everyone is expected to do, these same managers are considered travel guides to those yet uninitiated in the ways of innovation. They demonstrate ownership for all aspects of innovation. We refer to these informal innovation leaders as creativisers, self-authorising people who add creativity to ordinary business activities like hiring or budgeting.

To creativise

The Creativise Method spelled out in this chapter chronicles some of the key practices successful creativisers use to make innovation happen where they work.

The word creativise captures the essence of the transformation toward innovation. Creativise is a word that implies action, or a transformation toward an objective. Creativise starts with creativity —the fuel, or the raw material, of innovation. It is a capability that individuals and organisations must recognise and capture in all its forms. Once you or your organisation have realised this capability, you will be set on a path toward systemizing a culture of innovation. As you become a creativiser, you will develop the expertise necessary to put all these pieces together to lead an organisation on a path toward innovation.

Innovation genome

The Creativise Method takes the point of view that innovation isn’t really anything special. It’s part of most ordinary business activities. Indeed, every business already has some form of an innovation engine that drivers its growth. If it didn’t, it would quickly become insolvent. Once you know the innovation genome, recognising the underlying innovation practices of any business process becomes relatively simple—planning, measuring performance, allocating resources, hiring and development, and so forth. It is through the day-to-day actions of leaders that innovations are conceived, developed, and implemented. Of course, creating a new space shuttle to go to Mars requires a greater effort and range of expertise then creating a new restaurant, but the innovation practices have more in common than you might suspect. So, we are going to deconstruct the most elaborate innovation practices with the innovation genome and then reconstruct them through the Creativise Method so that anyone, anywhere, anytime can make innovation happen.

The DeGraff Hypothesis states, “The amount of innovation a company produces is inversely related to the number of slick PowerPoint slides or elaborate process diagrams it makes about innovation.” Instead, innovation takes root from experiments and experiences within the organisation and emerges in ways that companies often don’t suspect or plan for. The purpose of the seven steps is to show companies potential innovations that are emerging every day, right in front of them. Consider the case of Viagra, a drug that was originally intended to reduce blood pressure but was eventually discovered to have an “interesting” side effect.

The seven steps are intended to provide a structure for developing and recognising innovation. But at the same time, they also allow for flexibility. You can start with step one and move forward from there, or you can refer to a specific section or tool if that’s all you need at the time. In this way, you can customise the programme to fit your organisation’s needs.

A path to innovation

The Creativise Method for leading innovation laid out in this book emerged from our observations of numerous companies that had successfully translated innovation into tangible forms of growth such as increases in revenue, market share, or new market penetration. Although these firms operated in different sectors and diverse geographies, we noticed that there were common patterns and similar paths that these companies took for integrating innovation into the organisation’s everyday business practices. We codified and refined our observations into seven steps, and associated tools, that could be replicated by leaders anywhere in their organisation to create best practices for innovation every day, everywhere.

The strength of the seven steps is their ability to help an organisation develop a sustainable and resilient culture for innovation and the corresponding capabilities. These steps are less about high-born strategies, and more about getting larger groups of people to execute the innovation playbook. While designing winning strategies and picking breakthrough innovations are important, ultimately they are dependent on a complex array of dynamic forces operating in a predictable way.

Unfortunately, these forces typically function in a surprising and chaotic manner. In the end, leading innovation is really about leading people. It’s about finding a way to engage people to draw innovation from themselves and bring it to life within their organisation.

Once we identified the steps, we began to observe how they worked in a number of different settings. We soon realised that they were extremely versatile and applicable in multiple situations. For example, the steps have been used for a variety of situations such as identifying high-potential innovation leaders, launching a winning project, integrating best practices for innovation into existing organisational processes, and changing organisational culture and competency.

We also saw that these steps allow companies to pick and choose what they need for a given situation. While many firms choose to use individual steps, most run some combination. Few companies actually needed to run all seven. Some companies have very strong strategies that allow for innovations to emerge, but they need to focus instead on the organisational aspects of getting the right teams assembled. Other companies are really good at assessing themselves and getting everyone on board to get things done, but they have a difficult time identifying winning projects.

Excerpt from ‘Leading Innovation’ by Jeff Degraff & Shawn E Ouinn. Reproduced with permission Tata McGraw-Hill Publishing Company Limited. Rs 450. E-mail: vishwanath_mum@tatamcgraw-hill.com