"Innovation gets rediscovered as a growth enabler every half-dozen years (about the length of a managerial generation). Too often, however, grand declarations about innovation are followed by mediocre execution that produces anemic results, and innovation groups are quietly disbanded in cost-cutting drives. Each generation embarks on the same enthusiastic quest for the next new thing and faces the same challenge of overcoming innovation stiflers."
What's especially notable about this thoughtful, well-written article is the way in which Kantor focuses on people issues, and how they can derail innovation. And because human nature doesn't change all that much from one generation to the next, innovation mistakes and missteps tend to look quite when analyzed over a longer period of time (25 years, from the author's base of experience as a professor, researcher and consultant to a number of leading corporations).
"Despite changes to the environment and differences among types of innovation, each wave of enthusiasm has encountered similar dilemmas. Most of these stem from the tensions between protecting revenue streams from existing businesses critical to current success and supporting new concepts that may be crucial to future success. These tensions are exacerbated by the long-known phenomenon that important innovations often arise from outside an industry and beyond the established players, creating extra pressure for companies to find the next big concept quickly... Despite all the research and literature, I still observe executives exhibiting the same lack of courage or knowledge that undercut previous waves of innovation. They declare that they want more innovation but then ask, 'Who else is doing it?' They claim to seek new ideas but shoot down every one brought to them. And, repeatedly, companies make the same mistakes as their predecessors."
Other people issues cited by Kantor include jealousy of line employees over the special perks and privileges an innovation team may enjoy, holding innovations to the same hard-line budget and performance standards as established parts of the business, failure of managers to communicate and collaborate across divisional or functional silos, compensation policies that favor established business units, and the classic innovation killer - managers who undermine a new idea because they feel threatened by it.
Kantor provides a wealth of advice on how to avoid these innovation killers, and includes numerous examples of companies who have succeeded in overcoming them.
via Innovation Tools
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