I believe innovation is one of the most overused buzzwords. Why it is like that?

Often word “innovation” is used to name R&D (Research and Development). In my opinion innovation is a culture, while R&D is a process, which is often focused only in incremental improvements.

Culture

Do you know why companies like incremental improvements so much? Because of low risk. Most of current managers and executives are masters of status quo. Just a few percentage points better here, a few percentage points there, and they are safe and getting their bonuses.

For innovation just management is not enough, you need a leadership. That’s a huge difference.

Building innovation culture requires commitment, time and investment. But it pays back exponentially. It requires thinking beyond your quarterly and yearly KPIs. Also, it requires a systematic approach. Bringing all stakeholders to one room for 2 hours innovation brainstorming once a year definitely will not help.

During my experience I have seen like brilliant ideas got killed by conservative management. And after sometime more brave competitor implemented similar ideas to live and improved their position on the market.

My feeling that after couple of such moments even most innovative employees will stop sharing their ideas, and that’s the point when company starts dying and becoming a dinosaur.

I can say that one of the first things in innovative organization should be a freedom to speak up, fair system to capture and evaluate ideas. But ideas should not be random! That’s is where systematic approach to innovation comes to play. We all have been in brainstorming. It is kinda fun. But what about their efficiency?

Brainstormings

During brainstorming process, it is natural to quickly jump into solution due to limited time. But here is the tricky pitfall – “psychological inertia”. It means the man is always looking for solution in a box framed by his previous experience. It’s ironic, but many of us heard at the start of brainstorming: “Let’s think outside the box”  Well, well… 🙂 Solutions coming from experience box are barely will be the strong ones.

And another 5 cents to the problem: I believe that traditional brainstorming puts too little attention on understanding the problem. Here’s a great Albert Einstein quote: “If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about solutions.” I would say in brainstorming it is often the opposite.

I can say I just scratched the surface of big “innovation iceberg” here. If my writing inspired you and made you think, then I had my time well spent.

What about innovation in your company? Feel free to comment my post and stay tuned!