by Scott Anthony
Scott leads Innosight’s Asian operations. His fourth book on innovation, The Little Black Book of Innovation, will be released in early 2012. Follow him on Twitter at @ScottDAnthony.
Over the past year I’ve shifted my presentation materials so they include mostly pictures and 96 point font. That’s good for audiences (at least, I think it is), but bad when I get the kind of request that landed in my in-box last week.
“I’m doing an innovation update at one of our meetings and I’m hoping you can assist me with some conversation starters,” a senior leader said to one of our clients. “The main point of the presentation is to get the audience thinking proactively and positively about how they can contribute to innovation.”
I had presented a slideshow on this exact topic in April. Unfortunately, my slides consisted of a big picture of a black box, a photo of Steve Jobs, headshots of eight academics, a screenshot of an Old Spice advertising campaign, and a picture of my favorite haircut place in Singapore. The slides are pretty, but they won’t help a thirdparty who lacks the context.
So, my colleague Josh Suskewicz and I put our heads together and came up with the 10 innovation myths that we encounter most often in the field.
|
Myth
|
Reality
|
|---|---|
| Innovation is random | Innovation is a discipline — it can be measured and managed. Consider how Procter & Gamble’s structured approach to innovation allowed it to triple its innovation success rate and double the size of a typical initiative. |
| Only creative geniuses can innovate | Innovation is distinct from creativity. While creativity can help, people who aren’t intrinsically creative can create high-impact innovation if they follow the right process. |
| You’re either an innovator or you’re not | Research recounted in The Innovator’s DNA described how innovation is about 30 percent nature and 70 percent nurture. |
| Innovation happens in the R&D lab | Innovation — something different that has impact — can happen anywhere in an organization. Everyone should be looking for new ways to solve old problems. |
| We will win with superior technology | Most market disruptions rest on innovative business models — new ways to create, capture, or deliver value |
| Innovation is all about improved performance | Sometimes innovation is about improving performance along traditional dimensions, but some of the most powerful disruptive innovations sacrifice raw performance in the name of accessibility or affordability.* |
| Our customers will be a critical source of innovation insight | Your customers might tell you how to make your current offering better, but they won’t point the way to disruptive growth; you have to explore new markets in new ways to identify new growth businesses. |
| Game changing innovation is done only by entrepreneurs | Many of the most exciting disruptions in recent years — such as GE’s low cost imaging solution and Cisco’s TelePresence solution — have come from big companies |
| We will win by targeting the biggest markets | Markets that don’t exist are difficult to precisely measure or analyze; the most powerful innovations create new markets. |
| Innovation requires big bets | As our friend Peter Sims writes in Little Bets, if you want to win big, you should start small. |
There’s no doubt we missed something important in our list. What other innovation myths have you encountered?
* This is where the slide showing the barber shop example appears. Curious? It’s detailed in The Little Black Book of Innovation, coming out about two months from now!
Source:
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