This edition of the Agile Innovating TM Newsletteris for Business Leaders who want more innovation but are reluctant to invest in innovating.
The Boston Consulting Group, in studies conducted from 2005 to 2021, reported that 70% of the companies surveyed identified “Innovation” as a top 3 strategic priority, and that 90% of executives were dissatisfied with the performance of their Innovation Programs. The high levels of both desire and dissatisfaction are a signal that a paradox may be controlling activities and outcomes.
In this edition of the newsletter, we clarify how to prevent the paradox from stymieing innovation by identifying the missing vital element in many innovating programs.
Dr. Henry Chesbrough, the Director of the Center for Open Innovation at the Haas School of Business, University of California Berkeley, used the following two sentences to open his 2006 book “Open Innovation”;
“Most innovations fail. And companies that don’t innovate die.”
This business paradox is a pretty stark warning concerning two related subjects. It’s difficult to get excited about working in an environment that is characterized by the mantra “damned if you do; damned if you don’t”.
There are a lot of resources and help available for the most common aspects of innovation; namely, Invention, Introduction, and Adoption. Most companies employ similar methodologies, practices, and processes to guide them through these three stages. But obviously, given the persistence of the BCG data, the problem with innovation productivity isn’t resident in these innovating action areas. So what is the controlling issue?
To innovate means to introduce change. Change always occurs in context. Context is specific with respect to a situation. The issue controlling innovation productivity is whether you know enough about the context of the situation to specify the change you want to affect.
Developing a Change Specification early in an innovating project is the missing element and is an unrecognized success factor for innovation. If you don’t know….
· What you want to change….
· By How Much….
· Why….
· For Whom….
· Where and When….
· And How you’re intending to change it…..
…..you are innovating blindly. The lack of a change specification becomes a roadblock to developing a new Solution Specification. And without a clearly defined new solution specification, the chances that your desired innovation will succeed are low.
Making Sense of the Status Quo
The first step in developing a Change Specification is to understand the status quo in all three correlated environments: Solution, Market, and Business. These environments provide the context within which you intend to affect change. The status quo provides the insights to determine what could change and what should remain the same.
Making sense of the status quo is an activity that can be continuous, regardless of whether your attitude towards change is to be a “fast follower” or an “innovation leader”. By continually making sense of the status quo, you have the knowledge necessary to quickly develop a Change Specification for whatever situation your business finds itself in.
The status quo is the launch pad for high performance innovating, creating the conditions where innovation happens.
1. Making Sense of the Status Quo
2. Developing a Change Specification
3. Specifying Problems-Worth-Solving
4. Developing a New Solution Specification
5. Generating impetus and momentum to innovate from the Voice of the Job, Customer, and Stakeholder
6. Introducing a new solution that is better than available solutions
Conclusion
Innovating yielding innovations doesn’t happen by accident. As you can see from the 6 vital elements, innovating yielding innovations is both simple to organize and difficult to do. But Dr. Chesbrough’s interesting opening lines for his book are not the final word. You can prove him wrong if you can specify enough change and introduce it fast enough that innovating becomes a competitive differentiator for your business.
🌱
Specifications
Change and problems worth solving
Better solutions
-Innovation Haiku, Kevin A Fee, May 1, 2024