Notes on Innovation

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Innovation Traps

  • Project-related
    • Overspending too soon
    • Prioritising “can we” over “should we”
    • Pursuing unattainable perfection
    • Analysis paralysis
    • Using traditional market-forecasting tools
    • Fixating on core competencies
  • Company-related
    • Unbalanced innovation portfolio (e.g. mostly low-risk, low-hanging)
    • Too many lingering projects that should have been “killed”
    • Negative influence of the core business
    • Use wrong decision-making criteria

Time is Scarce for Innovation

  1. Core operations take up too much time
  2. Not setting up time for innovation guarantees it won’t happen
  3. Can we “take some time away from our core operations and it won’t suffer” but “what would happen if we didn’t set aside time for innovation?”
  4. Choices 1) should staff dedicate a portion of their time to innovate or 2) should a small group of people focus all their time on innovation? Choice is 2)

Principles of Disruptive Innovation

  1. Overshooting creates conditions for disruption – “good enough” is great!
  2. Disruption comes from breaking the rules – challenge prevailing mindset
  3. Business model innovation often powers disruption – new revenue & profit models, different value chain

Quotes

According to The Innovator’s Solution, customers don’t really “buy” products; they “hire” them to get jobs done.

Principles of Disruptive Success

  1. Start by targeting overshot customers or non-consumption
  2. “Good enough” can be great!
  3. Do what competitors don’t

Tactics Used by SalesForce

  1. started with non-consumption
  2. targeted a customer its competitors considered undesirable
  3. used different distribution channel
  4. create a business model that did not depend on the revenue stream of vital importance to incumbents

Innovation Metrics

  • Input-related
    • Financial resources dedicated
    • Human resources focused
    • Separate, protected resources for non-core innovation
    • Senior management time invested
    • Number of filed patent
  • Output-related
    • Number of new products/ services launched
    • Percentage of revenues from new products
    • Percentage of profits from new growth/ customers/ occasions
    • ROI of innovation

Spheres of Innovation (ascending)

  1. expertise
  2. insightfulness
  3. collaboration
  4. divergent thinking
  5. foresight

Book to read

Iconoclast by Gregory Berns
“Our brains tend to use historical knowledge as a frame of reference for future interpretation.”

Innovation Activities

  1. innovation festivals
  2. ideas bank
  3. ideas room
  4. idea days
  5. idea fund

Degree of Collaboration

  1. communication
  2. improvement
  3. integration
  4. transformation
  5. discovery

Successful Innovation Requirements

  1. strategic alignment
  2. customer alignment

Quotes

To have new solutions, we need new environment & people
There is more than one answer

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