PCC - The road to successful innovation

PCC: Part 1- Innovation process

PCC: Part 2- Purpose and Commitment

In the last decade innovation became an inherent part in any company portfolio and/or vision. Every other company describes itself as being in the cutting edge of innovation. The truth of the matter is that only half of them really succeed in practicing innovation in their day to day conduct.
Make no mistake, Innovation is a must process for any company. It provides organizations with: Sustainable advantage, Differentiation, Pricing power and revenue. So how does a company create a long lasting successful innovation process with tangible & intangible outcomes? Why aren't all companies as successful as Apple, FaceBook, Google, Amazon etc. in their innovative efforts?

This paper will discuss the basic ground rules on how to institutionalize an innovation process as part of a company's day to day conduct. Implementing a successful innovation process will need to address sub sequential guidelines mentioned here (These guide lines will be further discussed in my next articles).

The answer is quite simple:

Purpose
Commitment
Continuity

There you have it, the three foundation stones of a successful deployment of an innovation process in your company; three simple words that once you’ll assimilate their importance, embracing them as your motto will unlock the front door to a long and successful innovation process sustained by tangible outcome…And that's only the side bonus. The real pure profit is the change in your company's organizational culture, the integration of innovation into it.

So what's the problem? I know I'm not telling you anything you don't already know…If it's that easy…Why don't we all innovate all the time? Why do companies fail to integrate innovation processes into their day to day conduct?

The reason is: Basic mistakes in understanding the true meaning of the innovation process, commitment, continuity and tangible outcome. Let me try to explain:

Innovation process perception

The word innovation has a certain glow around it, everybody knows that it is one of the key elements to drive your company to success, and the general notion is that once you establish the process, everyone will join in and contribute, meaning your company is already 1/2 the way to becoming a leader in its market and in just a little while innovative fruits are about to fall into your lap.
Well…Guess again. It's complicated, hard to measure, illusive, frustrating and keeping it going as a part of the company's day to day conducting is a much bigger headache than you can imagine. It's one of the few processes that need constant life injected into it as you move forward.
But make no mistakes, its well worth it. Once its spirit is embedded as part of your company's organizational culture – I guarantee your company will become the first in its market.
You need to understand that institutionalizing an innovation process in any company is one of the trickiest, sophisticated and fragile tasks to accomplish. This process needs a leader with a vision capable of assimilating innovation into the fabric of the company's organizational culture.

Here is a list of a few barriers on the way (All related to PCC):
It is not instant – It takes a while before this process will provide your company with tangible breakthrough innovative success…And time is never on your side – Remember, you'll need to justify the budget given to you.
It's hard work to innovate – That's the first thing your employees will encounter. And that usually is when their enthusiasm and commitment fades away (The ones that were committed)
It's a full time job – Most organizations don’t understand that and want it to be an additional duty (CTO probably)
Cynicism – That’s a natural part of the process birth, but if you don’t understand that, you'll be discouraged faster than you think.
Commitment – What is its true meaning? I'll elaborate later on.
Tangibility – Was it innovation that produced the latest product or natural progression? We'll discuss this in detail later on.

Once you acknowledge the above (do not be intimidated, it's all solvable and damn well worth it), the ground you're standing on at the beginning of the process will be much more stable, and you're ready to address the process itself.
Some of the basic questions you'll need to answer are:
Is you're suggested innovation process module adequate to you're company's strategy and structure?
How will you neutralize the organizational and conceptual barriers mentioned in the section above?
How will you balance between creativity and value creation?

Understanding and adressing the questions and issues raised above is the first step on the road to successful innovation process in your company.

PCC: Part 3- Continuity

Now we come to the last C, Here I'll elaborate on how to sustain your innovation process

Now we come to the last C, Here I'll elaborate on how too sustain your innovation process. Remember, the purpose is to make the process an integral part of your day to day conductment and make it last. So:

Continuity
Yet another simple word isn't it? You deploy your process and, of course, have the initial commitment of everyone's involved and everybody is hyped. Yet, statistically, most organizations can't keep it for a long time or need a few attempts in order to build a process that lasts. So where do they fail?

Continuity is based mainly on 4 things:

The way your colleges perceive innovation as a part of your organizational culture, their commitment, your innovation contingency plan and the noise you make around it.

Here are some of the issues you'll need to address for successful continuity:

What motivates your employees? X/Y/Z Generation wise? Do you know their preferences? Which one of them would prefer money? Which one would prefer a voucher, a custom voucher according to his/hers preferences, maybe the visibility factor and the tap on the shoulder is what their looking for? Maybe they need a bit of them all? The answers to the questions raised above are the foundations for keeping your coworkers hyped on innovation and creating the success stories, thus nourishing the belief and commitment in this process amongst your coworkers.
Speak, Eat, Drink & Breath innovation – If you do, others will follow
One of the most important things to do if you want a long lasting innovation process is to keep in touch. There is nothing more frustrating and discouraging to an employee then not getting a feedback on his effort. And when I write feedback, I mean continuous feedback till either the innovative initiative becomes tangible or is rejected. Meaning, one must devise an ongoing feedback mechanism as a major part of the innovation process.
Find your innovative talents and assign them to your core innovative efforts
Selectivity and balance are critical – Make sure you update your management and employees on how will this process work, what needs to be done, outcomes etc.
Embrace failure, learn from it and make sure you extra encourage your employees when it happens.

Making noise is the easy part; there are lots of methods to promote success, here are some of them:

Promote the stories of employees that their innovation effort became tangible. Make it known to all your employees.
Success rewards.
Innovation festival
Innovation tournaments – Thus invoke innovative solutions to specific challenges.
Develop an open, collaborative innovation forum, where all your employees can add their ideas, share them etc.
Innovation based courses and lectures.

Having noted the methods above, one must consider here a few things before deciding on the right way to "make some noise":
How do you want to communicate the innovation process and its success stories to the senior management, Stakeholders? What interests them? How can you best pinpoint the most significant successes to them? How can you tie these successes to your innovation process? Is it that clear? And the same goes for your co-workers too.

Now, let's talk about the contingency plan?!...Well, yes contingency plan…Like any other project/process, one must consider what to do if…Here are some of those things: What will you do when you see the wind gets knocked out of your innovation sail? How can you keep the process alive if your budget is downsized? Did you analyze all the risks involved in this? What are your priorities? Did you consider joint ventures? Did you map your key guys, the people that will aid you taking this process a few steps further along? How will you deal with the loss of commitment from your employees? How do you keep your employees – Letting people play freely with innovation can invoke the entrepreneur in them, you may end up losing valued employees. As in any other project/process, in order to guarantee success, you need to plan ahead.

To conclude: Make no mistakes, I believe innovation is a must process to any company who wants to survive the modern business environment of today.
Answering the questions raised above is the first step towards initializing a successful and sustainable innovation process in your company. The questions and issues raised in this article are meant to emphasize the fact that planning ahead and taking into consideration all the factors mentioned above before devising a plan for an innovation process in order to create a successful sustainable one in his/hers company.

“The innovation point is the pivotal moment when talented and motivated people seek the opportunity to act on their ideas and dreams”. W. Arthur Porter. So make it happen for them….

In my previous article, I discussed the innovation process and the common mistakes made in its perception. I also mentioned some of the common barriers you'll encounter when trying to integrate the innovation process into your company.

This article will discuss two of the PCC foundation stones. Understanding and answering the questions raised further on under the PCC foundation stones will clarify the path to a long lasting successful innovation process. Now let's elaborate:

Purpose

Here are a few of the questions you need to ask and answer:
What do you want to achieve with innovation? What do you consider as success? What is the meaning of success to your company, and your employees? Is your definition vague as "Something that drives commercial value/cash flow", is it any new product/service or business module, value creation or an organizational “culture of innovation”? Is it all of them together, a mix of some?

Here's a suggestion, the two basic tangible types an innovation process should provide are:

Incremental - Small changes made to a product or service to keep the company competitive – I believe it is the most important type, since it’s the commonest innovation and they create a culture where sharing ideas is expected.
Breakthrough - A “big idea” that changes or makes a big difference for the company.

The non-tangible outcome is embracing and weaving innovation into your company's organizational culture, here are some manifestations:

Embracing failure culture.
Innovative vision for the company.
Enlistment and commitment of all of your company employees to innovate.
Now that success is much clearer, you can derive your targets from it easier.

Commitment

This is a base for any innovation process (Much less a successful one), without commitment of all personnel involved in the innovation process (Which should be all of your company personnel, from top management to the last employee), your attempt to embed innovation in your company is doomed to fail.
Clearly, the first thing that comes to one's mind is commitment of top management to the process. Is it enough? How do you measure it? Can it be measured only by significant KPI's?
This is only the tip of the iceberg; how do you perceive the innovation process (See the above discussion)? Did you consider what your true goal is? What are your objectives? Are you ready to commit to real products/services etc. to your stakeholders?
One important issue you'll need to address is expectation – Most people perceive innovation as finding the next breakthrough idea and once it doesn't happen fast enough, they become discouraged. Coordination of expectations from this process with all of the personnel involved is crucial.

Here's how I perceive innovation from an organizational point of view:
Innovation is a management process. Its inputs being: needs combined with creativity. Its outputs being: tangible and intangible applied results. Tangible results can be products/services/business models or work processes efficiency. Intangible results can be individual and organizational learning.
An innovation process needs to provide organizations with: Continuing advantage, Differentiation & Pricing power.

Once you purified and articulated the way you perceive the innovation process, you're ready to ask for commitment from others, be it top management, your employees and most importantly – Yourself.
The best way to do that is weaving innovation into your company organizational culture. Let me elaborate: In order to sustain an innovation process, you need to start from basics, you need to map your organization's culture and dissect it in order to determine, is it flexible/rigid? Hierarchic/Open? Insulated from impact by the outside world or multi subjected to its trends? Global/Local? What are the characteristics of your employees?
Fixation and the fear of changing are the enemies of any innovation process, much less a sustainable one, do you see them reflecting in your organization culture?
I believe that answering these questions are the base to any commitment you'll take on yourself and ask from others.

Here are a few notes worth taking into consideration with regard to commitment and organizational culture:

Innovation is a mindset, and that's the only way it should be referred to.
Innovation & commitment doesn’t just happen. It has to be nurtured, valued, welcomed and recognized. It has to be fostered by top leadership and become ingrained in a company’s culture.
Innovation requires top management commitment and a willingness to accept and embrace failure along with success.
Most top managements want the company to innovate, but still want to be accountable to the company and its investors.
The innovation process relies mainly on your coworker’s shoulders – Do you know who are they? What motivates them?
Commitment needs to be visible to and by everybody participating in the innovation process
Make sure everyone understands why innovation is a must in the business world – Make a compelling case.
Embed an innovative future vision into your company's existing one
Innovation is in some ways a journey to the unknown – You need to be able to show a well-planned strategic plan otherwise it will dissolve

Attaining top management commitment will result with:

Establishing a common vision of an innovative organization
Encouraging other managers to take the innovation process seriously
Visible involvement - Support of the innovation process group in word and deed
Resources

Getting co-workers commitment will result with:

Creation of an organizational culture, where sharing ideas is expected
Embrace Failure – having your coworkers and employees realize the fact that in an innovative business culture, failure is an option – This is a huge milestone on the road to great ideas. Just remember to fail fast.
Incremental and breakthrough innovative Ideas/Products/Services

The considerations made above are some of the basic questions and issues needed to be raised with respect to the commitment part of a successful lasting innovation process in your company.

Last but not least, please remember, you're not an innovation "messiah". Most of the chances are that your company and its employees are already innovating although they don't call it innovation (i.e. For the most part it's probably incremental innovation), so keep that in perspective when you address the issue of commitment.