mikolas

The Innovation Challenge

May 13, 2008 – 21:47 by Mikko Hämäläinen

Scott Berkun has an interesting essay, on how to innovate, that makes a lot of sense. Innovations and innovation culture has always been of great interest for me, mainly because I’ve been working on product and business development for quite some time now.

The biggest challenge is not innovation itself, but the management of the innovation process. Bear in mind that innovation process does not operate in vacuum – it must be connected to the business strategy and such be executed using same measures as the business strategy as a whole. As dull as it seems, one should be able to manage and communicate innovation process using BSC or strategy maps, just like any other business process.

If innovation should be so simple, then why the innovation process is so often seen as a failure or something extremely hard? First of all, innovation is too often seen as radical innovation. Radical innovation is hard, by definition, and that is why it happens so rarely. As I listed before, innovation process should be something that can be executed and measured as part of the business strategy – radical innovation rarely comes out of this as the focus normally is (maybe too much) on the present business and such in the present business value chain as it is.

Secondly, as radical innovation is hard it is too easy to fall into the incremental innovation trap. Usually this means lowering the expectations and calling any normal incremental product or process enhancement as innovation. After all, you just saved a few euro cents per transaction! Enhancing the product or process is not innovation – it is keeping the service competitive and up to date in order to keep up with the competition.

Thirdly, innovations may happen, be successful and really take the company apart from the competition. But can you keep up with the situation? The answer many times is no, since copying innovations is easy as the technological barriers are constantly eroding. This indicates a problem in the process, or lack thereof: getting it right once is luck, getting it right constantly is a working, executed, process.

Although it is easy to point out the usual problems in the innovation process, it is really, really, hard to manage the process successfully as it requires solid strategy, solid execution and solid measurability. Otherwise the process will fail, no matter how good it is.

A funnier writing on the subject can be found from the Secret Diary of Steve Jobs. It may be a parody, but it hits the the nail on many issues. What would Apple be without focused strategy and constant product innovation with a visionary dictator executing the business? Just another Dell.