A Dark Art No More

Link: Components of Creativity, Innovation happens in big corporates Written on: 11/01/2010

Like management methods before it, innovation is turning from an art into a science: “What matters gets measured”.

The wrong measures

It is a mistake to measure innovation by the number of patents issued by a company or the extent to which new technologies are introduced. The most fritle area of innovation today can be found in management.

A lot of innovation is anti-Six Sigma. You want a lot of variance.

Creativity is manybe 2% of the innovation process. It’s the part you can acquire from the outside of the firm.

THe process of innovation is like playing Jazz, there is no fixed score in any given improvisation, but that does not mean there are no underlying principles either. You need creativity and execution.

Innovation is a loser’s game, as we know most initiatives fail. But the truly innovative companies know how to deal with losing.

Like a dog with a bone, people don’t want to give up on their projects.

Ther is a danger with this strategy. When trying to satisfy their best customer, more features and better performance will exclude the majority of clients. f upstarts create the same products, in a simpler (although perfectly adequate) way, the first company becomes a nich, ultimately out of business altogether.

It is better to make things simpler and easire for the bottom and the middle of the maket, rather than add needely bells and whistles for the handful of top customers.

Firms copy Toyota for Qaulity and P&G for innovation, but it’s useless, their advantage is in the Culture, that drives their unrelenting quest for quality.