Innovation is the business buzzword of the moment. To hear the business bloggerverse say it, every company in the world must embrace innovation. Innovation is what created giants like Apple and Google, and what created the meteoric rise of anything touched by Elon Musk, and every company wants to be like that, or at least have a balance sheet like that, right?
And, of course, they have a point. The right innovative product, well-conceived and well-produced, delivered at the right moment, can have an incalculable effect on a business. It can catapult a business far ahead of its competition, or break into new business areas where there is no competition.
So promoting innovation across your business is good, right?
Well, not really.
Firstly, businesses must understand that innovation is, at its core, new ways of doing things. Maybe they are better ways, maybe not. The only way to find out for sure is to try them. Embrace risk, reward failure, and keep trying until you succeed, to paraphrase the innovation Gurus.
But, if everyone is trying something new, who is getting the work done?
The cost of innovation is efficiency, pure and simple. To promote innovation across the board is to throw out the lean, low-variation, efficient processes you've spent a lot of time and effort achieving. Not only will everyone be doing something new, everyone will be doing something different from everyone else. Not only is it a costly way of doing business, it doesn't position you well to capitalize on a really good innovative solution. Chances are, you won't even notice it.
The solution? Put your out-of-the-box thinking in a box. Build structure around innovation to keep it from adversely affecting your efficiency, and to use objective metrics to evaluate its worth.
Firstly, don't try to innovate everything at once. Someone has to pay the bills during the inescapable drop in productivity that adopting a new process or product will produce. By limiting innovation to individual teams or business groups, the rest of the company will be able to produce a predictable amount of revenue, which allows you to gauge how long you can afford to innovate.
Secondly, within your box, go wild with innovation. This is what the Guru's are talking about: get total buy-in, look at all the ideas, solicit incremental improvements and quantum leaps. Map out new processes, try out new technologies, and embrace failure as the stepping stones to success. Try everything and commit to nothing.
But while you're trying everything, measure everything. Imagine stern-faced lab-coated technicians with clipboards peering into your box, watching and recording everything. Use technology scouts, process analysis, and trial- and pilot-projects to plan and map the effects of innovation without the cost of full adoption. Having hard numbers will also help sell your innovation: it sounds far better to say "This innovation led to 23% increased capability after a six-week adoption period with a maximum efficiency loss of 20%", than does to say "This innovation will revolutionize sales."
When you finally do implement your revolutionary process or product, don't forget about it. Any new process or product will be raw, and will benefit from refinement. This is the difference between "a new way of doing things" and "a slick new way of doing things" Refining an innovative approach will give you something that is both innovative and efficient.
At the end of the day, innovation is a risky, costly proposition, and there are no guarantees that any innovation will actually be an improvement to the current way of doing things. The potential rewards are great, though, and the chances of reaping are much higher if those costs and risks are managed and contained. And, if you do create the Next Great Thing, all you'll have to do is put a bow on it.
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