I have written much about the limitations of continuous improvement and the role of creativity in injecting new avenues of improvement into an organisation and in thinking outside the natural laws that govern the technologies that define a current produce, service or process. Each time a new source of improvement or breakthrough is found, the propensity for innovations come into existence. The capability to identify this source and the capacity turn it into innovations is an advantage that organisations must afford to have in order to stay competitive.
From Managing Innovations to Managing the Engine that Creates Them
However, organisations cannot depend on a single improvement or innovation to stay competitive. In a dynamic market, competition is nearly perfect and organisations do not have long periods to enjoy the gains from their own innovation. The lifecycles of products, services and processes are getting shorter as more organisations have learnt to innovate and are capable of taking their own innovations to the market.
This means organisations need to move away from managing an innovation or a number of innovations; seeing them from conceptualisation to commercialisation, to managing the pipeline that creates these innovations. This is the engine that is capable of producing new innovation to replace the ones that are currently decaying in their lifecycles.
However, to manage innovation at this level, Organisational Development (OD) practitioners need to recognise the kinks in the pipeline. These kinks are the outputs of an overactive organisational immunity system working against all things that may create instability ln the organisation's current social order and topple its existing structures. This means, innovations do not flow through the organisation very well and regular interventions are needed to nudge the ideas and the innovations that come from them forward.
Seven Kinks of the Innovation Pipeline
Before we talk about the types of intervention, let's examine these seven kinks in the pipeline:
The Challenges of Imperfect Market
There are many individuals in organisations with ideas and solutions. Equally many are individuals looking for them. The challenge is that there is little knowledge in the market who and where these suppliers and buyers are and this create exchange inefficiencies in the organisational market of ideas and solutions.
Projectisation Challenges
Many ideas with breakthrough potentials are often given up because very few individuals are willing to stick their heads out to turn these into projects in order to draw value out of them. This does not mean that the motivation for enterprise is found lacking amongst the employees in the organisation. It suggests that people are turned off by the organisation's aversion towards uncertainty, its unforgiving nature towards failures, and an overly myopic focus on short-termism.
Challenges of Time and Space
Project teams face much inertia when they try to get their projects started. Some of these include finding the right members, right problem definition, and right range and scope. When things become tough, there is always a tendency for these teams to fall back on routine work methods and proven solutioning approaches, and symptomatic rather then underlying fundamentals issues get solved.
Challenges of Social Constraints
Research has revealed that leaders have the tendency to unknowingly introduce organisational and social constraints that prevent creativity and innovation to flourish in their own organisation.
Organisations may formulate and implement seemingly well meaning policies that have unexpected consequences that constraints the flow of ideas or innovations within the organisation. Organisations have both formal and informal structures that govern the distribution of power, influence and control between stakeholders. The flow of ideas and innovations in the organisation could be channelled or halted by these elements and the leaders needs to be sensitive to their use and the impact they create.
Challenges of Participation
Social interactions are always at the centre of creative ideas and innovations generation. The willingness of various players in innovation - the fund managers, entrepreneurs, protectors, advocators and promoter, to believe and participate in these interactions will determine the projects’ success.
Therefore, the quality and frequency of these interactions cannot be taken lightly and has to be cultivated over time. This requires the skills and acumen of the pipeline architects and the recognition that these players have to play two roles - the role of managing today and the responsibilities of managing for tomorrow now.
Challenges of Scarcity
The availability and accessibility to resources can make or break the project. Money is not the only resource teams need. They also need management approval, support and protection as these are capable of influencing the motivation, make-up and dynamics of the project team. Often, teams are frustrated and jaded because of the lack of such resources. Jaded individuals could create long term impact for the organisation as their existence always challenges the credibility and authenticity of management towards being an innovative organisation.
Challenges of Withholding Value
In a knowledge-based society, creativity and innovation is not constraint by the boundaries that separate spaces. Individuals and teams could choose not to contribute and they are equally capable of withholding the value of the innovation from the organisation and passing it someone they find worthy of receiving it. Individuals could start translating an idea created at one organisation in another. There is very little the organisation could do in terms of the policies that could be used to prevent the leakage of value from the organisation.
Managing Innovation in the Organisation is about Managing the Pipeline
It is therefore not surprising organisation has no problem recognised as being innovation when they managed these kinks well and those trying to be innovative find it to be a challenge to be one because they are doing the wrong things by copying them without understanding the underlying principles.
This article was 1st written on 29 April 2009 and updated on 15 May 2009.
Copyright 2009. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.
No comments:
Post a Comment