Innovation

Innovation is not just a restless adventure, but a cautionary tale and step-wise journey.

Innovation is a managed process to implement novel ideas; different types of innovation (incremental or radical) should be managed via tailored management processes.it can range from small to game changers. 

Environment either encourages or discourages innovation, the ease or difficulties inherent in surviving. You have to overcome different barriers carefully and manage innovation in the right way with the right elements, both visible and invisible strategically and systematically to achieve consistent business results.

Innovation & process: Innovation is not serendipity, it is a management process and business competency. Innovation has a very low success rate, the main process barriers to innovation are silos, rigidity, inflexibility, stagnation, or bureaucracy, etc. The innovation managers need to scrutinize processes via system lens: Is there transparency in follow-up of a system of the innovation process from the idea up to the implementation? Are processes too rigid to adapt; too fragile to handle disruptions? Is the innovation process event driven or goal driven? Are there too many disconnects that occur between the birth of a concept and the process of turning it into a reality? Is the process overly standard, lack of flexibility? Does the process management have the very characteristics of responsiveness, sensitivity, or flexibility, people-centricity?

Innovation processes are varying: go nuts in your ideation process, but stay grounded by including reality checks in the broader processes. Innovation processes should demonstrate the business logic and a certain level of flexibility to take activities for getting the work done in a new way. From a macro perspective, a considerably loose and circular process is essential to manage the organizational level innovation effectively and develop a balanced innovation portfolio. With continuous process improvements, you can develop a powerful idea pipeline, reduce costs and increase the innovation success rate.

Innovation and Implementation: In high mature organizations, innovation strategy is an integral component of business strategy. Innovation execution is an integral part of strategy execution. Compared to other business initiatives, some innovation efforts take time to nurture and mature, as innovation implies high risks and high return. Even if you have many innovative ideas, it doesn’t guarantee innovation success due to the possible execution gaps. It’s critical to de-risk the introduction of innovations into the market, protect existing operations and brands, and establish clear proof-of-concept before making investments to launch and scale.

If generating ideas is more art than science; then implementing ideas is more science than art. High performance organizations create a disciplined, managed space for developing and testing new models, products/services, shielding innovation teams from the organization’s dominant logic and established standardized operating models, strike the right balance of flexibility and processes. A logical innovation implementation scenario has clear stages, well-selected decision-making parameters, performance thresholds, and combined with an iterative, experiential learning process that supports wide-ranging exploration at each stage to achieve business goals. Bridging innovation execution gap to achieving the business objectives requires a contracted execution scenario with clear stages

Innovation & intrapreneurship: Intrapreneurship is about discovering the new path for business growth by taking entrepreneurship activities. Practicing intrapreneurship in large enterprises needs to strike the right balance between stability and change, creativity and processes. Because if an established firm identifies a new value proposition that requires a change in the business model or the creation of a new one, then it's strategically safer to develop an independent venture, inspire entrepreneur spirit, break down “we always do something like that” maturity, and accelerate change or innovation.

Practicing intrapreneurship means enterprises should cultivate a startup culture, improves company performance by increasing the firm’s pro-activeness and willingness to take risks, and by pioneering the development of new products, process and services through enriching its culture, get smarter and flexible in building unique business competencies and pursuing the next cycle of business growth. Regardless of which vertical sectors you are in, the orchestrated corporate entrepreneurship activities can improve organizational growth and profitability and, depending on the company’s competitive environment, their impact may increase over time.

Due to the hyper-complexity of modern businesses, innovation has become more intense with information exponentiality and broader knowledge transfer. Innovation is not just a restless adventure, but a cautionary tale and step-wise journey. Innovation leaders need to clarify the goals and scenarios of innovation and take initiatives to drive innovation efforts systematically.

Posted in: Innovation