Why Do Big Organisations Find Innovation So Difficult?
Many big organisations report problems with innovation. They either fail to innovate or kill the early seeds of innovation. This much is well known and has been subject to serious analysis, which is more than I am going to do. A university can support creative thinking and can provide the technical expertise to make ideas happen, but neither of these are any use unless the big organisation avoids some well-known issues. If you work for a big organisation you can use this simple test as a guide.
For each 'innovation-inhibitor' that you recognise from your own organisation score 1 point
We recruit wrong. We tend to look for conformists rather than rebels. Nobody gets recruited unless they have experience in the business. Mostly we recruit from our immediate competitors. We expect established industry skills and recruit to tightly defined roles. We are very wary of recruiting anybody who has taken a risk and failed.
We do sometimes recruit people with a track record of innovation and we put them in the innovation unit where they write innovation strategies.
Whenever a novel idea emerges we get all the people who might, conceivably, be concerned with it engaged in analysing it. They are each encouraged to identify key risks from their standpoint.
We require all projects to go through a corporate business case process at an early stage.
Our organisation tends to punish failure so, with the aim of protecting innovators, we ensure that individual responsibility for an idea is suitably diluted.
We will not kill or cannibalise our existing product or service lines. If an innovative idea threatens to do this it is easier to stop it an an early stage.
Lots of ideas come our way but we cannot choose between them, it is too risky, so we tend to get stuck in a perpetual process of analysis, unable to abandon anything but unable too to proceed with any particular idea.
Our customers are very valuable to us and are protected by sales and marketing. We cannot risk exposing customers to a new idea, let alone testing a new product or service, for fear that they will either not like it or become dissatisfied with the existing offering.
Our management gets easily distracted by 'shiny lights'. Once an idea becomes prominent in the industry it is difficult to focus their attention on any other innovation, and any new idea is seen refracted through it.
We are successful and, for the most part, do not see any reason for change. The organisation is satisfied with itself. To suggest that things need changing is to criticise individuals which is regarded as unacceptable. In any event our organisation cannot sustain small business lines.
Score 1: a determined group of individuals could possibly make innovation happen.
Score 2: innovation might still be possible but not if it is seriously disruptive.
Score 3: new products or services can emerge but only as conservative extensions of what is done already.
Score 4 or above: basically, no chance, just be thankful you do not go backwards.