Posted: November 7th, 2011 in Innovation, Senior Management Committment
By Marci Jacobs
It’s pretty tough to google “innovation” these days without “Steve Jobs” flooding your search engine. In fact, as we’ve asked clients over the years to tell us what first comes to mind when they hear the word “innovation,” most hold Steve Jobs top of mind, along with the iPhone and, more recently, the (we’ll assume non-eponymous) word “jobs.”
Jobs will certainly be remembered as one of, if not the, great innovators of our time. Equally certain is that there will be no shortage of analysis aimed at deconstructing the elements of Jobs’ genius and how organizations can go about finding it or replicating it.
But Jobs’ legacy teaches us that successful innovation is about more than identifying the next great visionary out of the crowd.
First, innovation is a discipline. Granted, the innovations that came out under Jobs were so exciting, new, and tremendously successful he seemed almost omniscient in anticipating what consumers would want and would pay for. But Jobs’ devotion to usability, design, and product experience set him apart as a true genius and not just another techy. The magic of the iPod lay not merely in its operating system, but in the work of dissecting user behavior down to the sensory level and molding new-to-the-world technology around user sensation and intuition. Jobs’ innovations were as much products of great vision as great discipline.
Second, innovation won’t drive itself. As a corollary, all the discipline in the world won’t turn just any employee into the next Steve Jobs. Breakthrough innovation is as much an art as a science, and leaders can only emerge in a culture that welcomes innovation and tolerates risk. Jobs had the ability to wield masterpieces out of his understanding of how we use things, how we’d like to use things, and how to build things we’d love. However, Apple was unfriendly to his better-to-be-a-pirate-than-serve-in-the-navy mentality - and the product flops that went with it - when he was fired from his company in 1985. While visionaries like Steve Jobs may just happen and are not made, organizations must cultivate an innovation culture that will recognize that vision when it comes along.
Third, innovation begets innovation. Jobs’ greatest legacy lies perhaps in motivating leaders everywhere to think more expansively about how and why they do business, and in encouraging employees to consider the power of a single idea to shape-shift an organization. Revolutionary ideas are rare and the revolutionaries who create them even rarer; nevertheless, committing to innovation as an ideal instills a mindset that if you shoot for the moon you’re certain to end up among the stars. And it is this mindset that transforms everyday operations into a forward-thinking and inspired pursuit of the bold, excellent, and new.
Posted: March 11th, 2009 in Senior Management Committment, Innovation Culture
Creating A Declaration of Innovation
Everyone has been focused on cutting costs and cutting jobs of late. The problem is that we have now cut the legs out from under many of our businesses. The economic situation will only turn around if we start putting people back to work and recreate jobs, then get businesses to invest again in future growth. One critical way to stimulate that growth is through innovation.
However, the innovation naysayers are widespread these days. “How can we possibly afford to invest in innovation?” “Our budgets have been slashed.” I understand. However, most companies haven’t fired their sales force, their marketing departments, or their accounting and finance people. Manufacturing plants are still operating and engineers are still working. The problem is that innovation hasn’t yet reached the priority level that it needs to be at in most companies.
Innovation is not a luxury expenditure that can be made in flush times. It must be viewed as a core business strategy that needs to be built into the budget in the same way as any other functional area – an on-going business discipline.
So what does it take to achieve this? First, get the CEO to move innovation towards the top of his/her to-do list. OK, but then what?
The next step is to create a simple but well thought-out statement on the strategic and financial roles that innovation should play for the company going forward. Often, I will refer to this as an Innovation Strategy or A Declaration of Innovation. This 1-2 page document needs to be signed by the top 7-8 executives similar to our forefathers signing the Declaration of Independence. One of the keys for innovation success is getting all senior managers on the same page in terms of how they define innovation, how they want to measure it, a common description of success, and an agreed-upon process. Making this dialogue happen is one of the most valuable things that a CEO can do to activate innovation – as opposed to just talk about it.
What goes into an Innovation Strategy (or Declaration of Innovation)? It should start with an Innovation Vision which defines the overall role and purpose of innovation within the company. Closely linked to this vision are Innovation Strategic Roles and the Financial Growth Gap. The roles should describe more specifically the balance of new products, new services, new business models, and new-to-the-world initiatives with closer- in more incremental innovations. The Financial Growth Gap should set up the financial gap that new innovations are expected to fulfill within the next 3-5 years.
In addition, screening criteria need to be developed along dimensions of customer or consumer need, market attractiveness, degree of competitive insulation, operational feasibility, and ultimately financial hurdles. However, it is important not to consider financials until concepts have been fully explored with consumers and/or customers.
By taking the time to get senior leaders to agree on these issues, most companies will have cleared one of the biggest hurdles to innovation – getting everyone at the top to agree to innovation objectives, goals, and the “rules” of the innovation game. While there is still more work ahead, creating an Innovation Strategy starts to shift the mindset and re-invigorates the culture to view innovation as an on-going business activity.
Posted: March 4th, 2009 in Senior Management Committment
Recently, Amazon released it’s updated e-book reader, the Kindle 2. This device allows users to purchase and download books wirelessly, kindle-2and read them wherever they go. It packs in a lot of cutting-edge technology to make reading, as well as buying reading material more convenient. Regardless of your opinion of e-book readers, the Kindle 2 tries very hard to innovate relative to avid readers’ needs and problems.
One of the Kindle 2’s nice features that probably isn’t “core” for most users is the ability for it to convert text to speech. It uses a voice synthesizer (if you’re not familiar - picture a much more human-sounding speak-n-spell) to read text from books, news, or other documents aloud. Synthesized speech tends to mispronounce some words, and does so in a monotone that could not be honestly mistaken for human. Most computers also include some variation on this feature, and have for years. Overall, it’s not really an exciting bit of tech.
This makes the Author’s guild’s reaction to the Kindle 2 that much more bewildering. Instead of expressing support for the advancement of technology devoted to reading, they attacked the text-to-speech feature and are threatening legal action. Why? President Roy Blount Jr. contends that having a gadget read an e-book aloud constitutes copyright infringement.
I’ll let that sink in.
The short version of their argument is that when the Kindle 2 reads an e-book aloud, it infringes on the author’s right to be paid for listening to a copy of an audiobook. To most people, a computerized voice reading text is not equivalent to an audiobook prima facie, making Blount’s complaint not a little contentious.
While the legal and technological ramifications here are dense and generally defy common sense, these are covered well elsewhere. The truly discouraging feature of Blount’s complaint is that it shows a deep commitment to not innovating.
Mr. Blount starts his argument by lamenting “…all the new ways of not getting paid that new technology affords authors.” Blount’s problem here is twofold - first, he is determinedly avoiding the possibility of using innovation and new technology to better meet the needs of consumers of books. Second, he is ardently propagating the public perception that the Author’s Guild cares about “getting paid” more than the needs of his industry’s customers.
By attacking the Kindle 2’s functionality, he is not looking for ways to make the pie bigger, he is simply demanding another piece of Amazon’s pie. Blount should be looking for ways that authors can leverage the Kindle 2 to innovate and deliver more value to the consumer. The Kindle 2 is ripe for the introduction of a new way to deliver literature and connect with consumers. In fact, this is the entire point of Amazon’s device. Blount ignores these opportunities and unfortunately invites ridicule from the tech-savvy crowd in the process.
A refusal to innovate is not just a missed opportunity - it is a step toward alienating your customer.