In tough times, we need good ideas more than ever. Today while the world sinks into recession, we at ?What If! are still busy innovating - but the nature of our innovation projects has changed. Out go lengthy product and brand development projects and in come innovation projects that hit the bottom line very quickly. New ideas that drive sales, ideas that make us more nimble at work, ideas that connect us with customers and weld steel into our backbones - this is what innovation looks like today and there has never been a better time to innovate.
Successful innovation always has three forces at work. To make it really simple these are:
1. Individuals who believe innovation is important, are confident they can do it and who are bothered enough to stretch
2. Teams that work quickly and where the quality of the output is more important than ego
3. An organisation that at the very least doesn’t get in the way of innovation and at best accelerates it
The Innovation Energy Sweet Spot is the confluence of these three forces. What’s fascinating about this sweet spot is that although many of us recognise it, we often only get there through luck rather than judgement or design. From our own experience working with entrepreneurs and executives, they will come back to these three themes time and time again; “I was determined, the team worked together brilliantly, my boss let me fly”. This is Innovation Energy and it’s what powers innovation success, but to make sense of it we need to deconstruct it into these three ‘levers’.
Innovation attitude isn’t something that can be just turned on. Someone’s attitude is the sum total of their past experiences that crystallise into a ‘mindset’, it’s hard wired. Innovating with a small team means you can pick your people and effectively choose your mindset. On a broader cultural scale, innovation takes a lot longer to develop.
As management get a clear picture of what a ‘good attitude’ looks like, they can restock the pond with a new attitude, but this takes time - years in fact.
Get the right Innovation Attitude
- People need to believe that innovation is needed and to feel confident they can do it
- Re-focus the team with a consumer perspective; all that matters is this. Any internal issues are secondary
- Embrace a crisis - don’t give up, now is the time to innovate
- Give confidence that innovation is ‘something I can do’
- Disaggregate innovation to Insight x Ideas x Implementation = Innovation and provide skills training
What gets in the way of innovation? Ask people to answer this question and it’s surprising how so many of the perceived barriers are internal. Often an innovation process has a reputation as too rigid, too time consuming with the effect of stifling initiative. Very often, we hear that some of the people involved, or more accurately their behaviour, ‘drains the life out of innovation’.
Practise the Innovation Behaviour
- Innovation Behaviour can turn a rusty super-tanker into a speedboat - the ultimate innovation makeover
- Everyone on the team needs to get behind these new behaviours - one doubter can slow everything down
- Innovation Behaviours can only be learnt through practice
The final act of our innovation trilogy is to explore how an organisation can, at the very least, not get in the way of innovation and, at best, support it. As has been noted, a culture of innovation needs years of cultivating - fertilising the corporate soil so that when idea seedlings are planted, they stand a better chance of flowering into revenue streams. This isn’t an issue for middle management; it’s a top leadership challenge that requires a long-term approach and a committed top team.
Organisations that support innovation
- Freedom in a gilded cage
- Innovate with innovation
- Walk the talk
- Tell stories – communicate ‘til you puke!
- Pay attention to environment
Customer empathy is a very powerful way to create a great innovation attitude - in fact it’s hard to get to the innovation energy sweet spot, to that energetic place, if you’re not driven by a sense of doing the right thing for your customers.
Creating a sense of purposefulness around customers is the foundation of an innovation culture. Getting into their shoes, getting out of your offices and seeing the environment in which customers make decisions or expressing the project challenge as a customer would (‘products so good I want to lick them’) - none of this has to cost very much, but it does take effort to organise and make happen. The results are very energising.
Innovation Energy is truly a tool for tough times. Its effect is to strip away wasteful working practices and quickly engage project teams in a practical and inspiring way with customers.