9

Success Factors For Breakthrough Innovation

How well prepared are you for the future?
questions. The #1 reason why breakthrough innovation fails is because time is not invested up front, to align the organization around these key factors. 4. Visible senior management involvement. Incremental innovation can be pushed down into the organization where the strategy is clear, decision metrics are clear, and management models like Stage Gate create a level playing field. However, for gamechanging innovation its the opposite. The strategy is fuzzy and traditional metrics cant be applied early in the process, because that which is truly new has no frame of reference, nor benchmark. So Stage Gate models can unintentionally kill potentially big ideas. The pursuit of gamechanging innovation only works when the person who can say yes to big spending visibly sponsors and participates in the work and provides air cover to the work team. The Higher the Goal the Higher the Role. 5. A decision-making model that fosters teamwork in support of passionate champions. Breakthroughs cannot survive without a decision-making model that is different from the one used for incremental innovation. Its not about metrics; its about the educated gut. And old models dont work. Autocratic decisionmaking usually fails to engage all of the critical stakeholders, while consensus sinks every decision to its lowest possible common denominator. It doesnt work without a passionate Champion who can make decisions and engage the team to support those decisions. We call it Championed Teamwork. 6. A creatively resourced, multifunctional team. The best teams have three ingredients: 1) Project Champions who can make decisions in the work sessions and advocate for them with executive sponsors, 2) necessary & relevant expertise, and 3) nave, seemingly irrelevant diversity. Most often a breakthrough starts with the nave and then the experts determines how to do it. 7. Open-minded exploration of the four marketplace drivers of innovation. Organizations dont change because they want to. They change because they are forced to by four uncontrollable marketplace factors: customers, competition, government regulation, science & technology. Only by exploring these four drivers of change can a company begin to recognize what it must do to be relevant in the future. 8. Willingness to take risk and see value in absurdity. Albert Einstein once said, If at first a new idea doesnt seem totally absurd theres no hope for it. And hockey great Wayne Gretzky is alleged to have said, I dont skate to where the puck is; I sake to where its going to be. Innovators understand that you have no choice; you must take risks, often big ones, by skating toward the absurd, the seemingly irrelevant, in order to create preemptive competitive advantage while competitors skate to where the puck is. 9. A well-defined, yet flexible, execution process. So now you have some potentially big new ideas. In The Other Side of Innovation, Govindarajan & Trimble pop one of the biggest myths in innovation: All we need are some big ideas and we know how to execute. Wrong! What companies are great at is executing on the small, incremental changes needed to stay competitive now. And thats challenging enough. What they dont know how to do is nurture, support, learn, and modify potentially big new ideas with a different, more flexible execution process. These are innovations 9 critical success factors. If your personal ratings total more than 65, you work in a pretty innovative environment. If your ratings fall below 65, then you may want to think about how well you are poised for the future.
By Mark Sebell, CEO Creative Realities, Inc. www.creativerealities.com

/ WHAT IS INNOVATION? At Creative Realities we define it as the process of envisioning and successfully implementing new ways of doing anything that creates value for an enterprise and its customers. Its about more than just new products and services. As business innovationists we have identified innovations 9 critical success factors. If 10 is outstanding and 1 is terrible, how do you rate your organization on each one? 1. A compelling case for innovation. Unless people understand why innovation is necessary then in the battle for resources it always loses to the support of the existing business. In 1513 Machiavelli wrote: There is nothing more difficult to carry outthan to initiate a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order. Not much has changed. 2. An inspiring, shared, vision of the future. Most companies anticipate the future based upon the past. This is a deductive model and, not surprisingly, the company always is relevant in that future. However, when an inductive model is used, where the past is suspended and a holistic view of the future is envisioned, then tidal forces of change are more easily recognized and (surprise!) the company may not look relevant in that future. 3. A fully aligned strategic innovation agenda. As the Cheshire Cat said to Alice in Wonderland, If you dont know where youre going any road will take you there. Innovation is a journey into the unknown, and there are many paths open to the innovator. Before starting it is essential to know things like: 1) What business are we in now and want to be in going forward? 2) What is our risk tolerance for pursuing big, game-changing ideas? and 3) other critical strategic