Today I’ll focus on a very basic question: is it really possible to say, that one is an innovation expert at all?
This question has been keeping me awake for quite some time and I don’t know if there is a correct answer. But I’d like to get closer to one and I’d like to share that thinking process with you.
Why do companies look for ‘innovationists’?
First thing to understand is, that everything that has a market also exists somehow. Or at least it can exist. This means that as long as there are companies asking for people to help them to be innovative, there will be people that are what I call ‘innovationists’. But why do companies look for those people? I think that’s because they currently lack the structure of an innovative company.
Where startups and corporates differ
If you think of business partnerships you need to differ between the stages companies are in. For the easiness of understanding I’ll make a difference between startups and corporates here, knowing of course that there’s a lot in between. Startups often are looking for corporate influence, although they wouldn’t call it like that. But they do. They look for experienced business angels or investors. Or they look for big companies that might open their sales channels for the startup. The need of the startup is quite easy to sum up: they want to access a large-scale market without having the experience or the structure to do so. So they either find a person that helps them grow and scale (= growth minister) or they start partnerships with people or companies that are big enough to multiply their business right away.
Corporates on the other hand have a much wider variety of partnerships that might bring value. There are still even bigger companies which offer a bigger combined market in a partnership (i.e. insurance company and car manufacturer). Same sized partners are often creating a virtual vendor lock in as they address different steps in a value chain but offer better or exclusive integration of the next step(s) for their partner (i.e. better conditions for an insurance if you financed your car at a certain bank). Another very interesting partnership is the other perspective on the partnership already mentioned in the paragraph before this one: the startup-meets-corporate-partnership. Corporates do this because they see a structural problem in their own organization. They realized that they cannot address a (new) market the way it should be penetrated with their own power. They need someone that is faster and closer to the market. They also want to have a partner they can “dominate”. That’s why small partners are attractive to corporates. To get those partners in a very early stage, they create accelerator and incubator programs. What most of the corporates don’t get at the moment: that kills most of the speed within the small partners. When you want to dominate a small and dynamic company you kill their dynamic.
What’s the alternative to accelerators and incubator programs?
The logical next step is to ‘change’ your own structure to be more innovative. That’s where the intrapreneurs come in. The vision is to find people that think like entrepreneurs and act like corporate managers (very short version). Well, that’s nice, isn’t it? But where should those guys come from. Of course, just hire successful entrepreneurs, give them a lot of money (which they might take with a smile since they just decided to settle down after many years of day and night work and now they start a family) and ‘let them do’. This might work, but most times it’s more a pushing away of responsibility and an act of telling your shareholders that you are sooooooo innovative and sooooooo active to address new markets.
They don’t understand the real problem
What those actions show is that corporates don’t understand the real problem. The real problem is that markets are completely different today. Look at how startup environments and eco systems are growing all around the world. One of the reasons for that is that it’s much easier today to access markets and to create products due to modern technology. What this basically means for corporates, is that they don’t have to face a few potential competitors but a huge amount of people that can easily access markets.
This means that without changing the own approach to address and access markets corporates will probably be attacked by nearly everyone out there. Just hiring someone and give him responsibility for innovation just isn’t enough.
How can someone external help there?
Someone external has one special advantage: he doesn’t have to think in the normal linear corporate process. Enterprise processes (mostly defined after big business process reengineering projects) are not ready for iteration. That’s where an external consultant can bring in other impulses. He’s able to extract the iterations to another level that’s not integrated into the linear process.
A simple visualization of what happens can be done like this:
The external resource or team only integrates in crucial steps but leaves out the iterative part. That only works if the linear process is so flexible, that it can accept real progress from step to step. Wait! Real progress? Yes! Real progress is something different than process progress. We understand real progress as something that allows business model and product pivoting.
So the step borders can be defined as quality gates for the innovation creation process. Steps are basically failure tests. If you don’t really pivot your model from step to step, you shall not pass. If you’re able to pivot you can take the step or redo the phase before and try to take the step again.
What you see above is a blueprint on how to implement innovation processes in corporates! It makes the required iteration tasks a black box and let’s the process guys sleep. It also does something quite dirty but working: it makes failure less visible. That’s very important for the political environment in corporates. If you fail in a iteration that are in a black box you don’t fail in your organization!
Back to the question: can you be an ‘innovationist’?
Let’s shorten this up: yes you can! What you as a person whether external or internal need to realize is that you need to hide the iteration part and play the corporate role in regards of politics and reporting. If you’re able to stand the shitstorm and if you have someone from senior management that trusts and supports you: this will work!
Categories: basics, motivation
the lean consultant | mantro.net 