I have put a lot of energy into innovation initiatives in my career. Some have been successful and some have failed, but all have been difficult. What is more the larger the initiative the harder it is and the more likely it seems to fail.
The reasons for failure are many and varied, not that failure is bad when innovating, in fact I would say that some level of failure is required in any major innovation. After all innovating is doing something new, something that has not been done before, and it would be a foolish person who assumes they get it right first time every time.
One of the major difficulties I have come across is trying to innovate in a large established successful companies is so many good people seem to be trying stifle innovation. It seems inexplicable in many cases – intellectually they see the value in the innovation but it seems they cannot embrace it.
One explanation for this is described in the book ” The Other Side of Innovation” by Govindarajan and Trimble. They describe why major innovation can be almost impossible in the heart of a successful organisation.
The heart of a successful organisation is driving the company forward by continually replicating it’s success in a repetitive and repeatable manner. Innovation by its definition is neither repetitive or repeatable, it is doing something that is new, that has not been done before. If you try and do that at the heart of the company it will either fail or break the company.
So what is the solution? Well for me just understanding this means that you can devise ways of working to surmount this problem
Chris Trimble explains the problem and proposes a solution on youtube. I have put together a playlist of 4 of his videos – the first 2 are introductory, the latter 2 get into the detail.
Chris Trimble on “The Other Side of Innovation”
If you are struggling to be an Innovation Superhero it is an interesting 24 minutes.
Great post. Thank you, Chris.
John