How to Nurture Innovation

"Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It's not about money. It's about the people you have, how you're led, and how much you get it." -- Steve Jobs, Fortune, Nov. 9, 1998

Many companies claim to be at the cutting edge, batting around words like creativity, innovation and design like they are going out of fashion. The truth is that most big companies that sell a product (whether designed in-house or by a consultancy) are nothing but vast marketing organisations with design being talked about in terms of 'a differentiator' rather than the modus operandi. Very few companies actually have design and innovation at the core of their operations, let alone understand how to nurture innovation within the company. Below I would like to offer my opinion on what, is needed to nurture and foster innovation within an organisation rather than having it accidentally appear once never to be repeated. As Steve Jobs puts it - it's about people, what you do and how you do it rather than dollars.

1. Less Admin - More Action
   A while ago I wrote about a phenomenon I call I have Reportees Therefore I Am, which is as prevalent in the design industry as in businesses in general. It can be summarised as the trend towards rewarding people for how many people are beneath them (as reportees) as opposed to rewarding them for the quality of work they do. If the only way to get career progression is that you have to give up designing (programming, selling, [substitute word here]) to become a manager, then this is a spectacular way to lose talent in an organisation without a decrease in the payroll. Instead encourage people to become the best they can ever be in their field and have a few managers around too, but the number of managers should NEVER exceed the number of reportees in a team. I once ran into a designer at Volkswagen, who had been with the Company for about 20 years. He was a designer, but not just any designer - this guy knew more about cars and design than the rest of the design department put together. The company realised this and did not want to lose him under any circumstances, therefore they paid him more than the head of the entire design department and the guy above him. Why? Because he was the top of his game and his greatest skill was designing. Imagine what a loss had he had to become a manager to get a payrise?
2. Balance Thinking With Making
   The temptation of many companies is to split up the process of front-end concept development and innovation from the actual process of production. This is very dangerous. It means that the people at the front end gradually get more isolated from the daily reality of making things. It also means that those involved in production have no outlet for all the ideas they come up with. Last but not least, there is no greater satisfaction than getting to finish something you started, so handing projects over from Front-end to Production is like giving your child up for adoption. You need one to be good at the other and vice versa.
3. Make Meaning Not Just Money
   This point is paraphrasing something Guy Kawasaki puts so well in his book 'The Art of the Start and is also a central theme in the book Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary CompaniesInnovators are visionary people who are propelled by the notion of making the world a better place and in terms of pulling out all the stops to create something truly spectacular, this is infinitely more appealing than just meeting the bottom line. Bottomline is what enables us to be here, but the vision is what makes us surpass ourselves. Furthermore, designers and programmers in particular, but others too, enjoy their craft and a chance to surpass themselves and expectations is a great motivator. This point also comes with a stern warning: be careful what you reward in an organisation as picking the wrong indicators for performance can mean people taking shortcuts to produce substandard output, but looking good on paper. Remember that old story about nail production in the old U.S.S.R? As the story goes, the Central Committee agreed a new five year plan and part of this plan was the target for nail output each year, measured in Kilograms. What happened? At the end of the 5 years, a single nail was made, to the exact weight of the specified output.
4. Thinking Big AND Playing Safe Many companies fear the big ideas and concentrate on infinite incremental improvements to a mediocre product. The assumption is that big ideas make you vulnerable to risk and the way to do it is to play safe instead. The mistake here is the fact that these need not to be in conflict - the way to implement big ideas is to do them gradually, over time - but rather than simply think incremental improvements of existing products, think of the end result and work backwards. If this means splitting up the big idea into intermediary product launches, that is not a bad thing - it builds sales and gets you talking to your market sooner.
5. Diverse Teams
   Many people of identical profession in a room will not come up with as good idea as a team made up of individuals from diverse backgrounds and disciplines. Why? Because when you are with your peers you end up reverting to jargon, covering over familiar ground without really being challenged. When dealing with people from other disciplines you have to try much harder to explain things, and their questions, input and ideas will take the thinking in radically different ways - which is where innovation happens.

I'm sure that as I post this entry I shall be thinking of other points, but this at least makes for a stab into the full complexity of the subject. Again, your comments are much appreciated.

References:

Steve Jobs' Best Quotes

The Art of the Start

Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies

Comments

[martin]

Regarding "Thinking Big and Playing Safe": many companies think big by concentrating their effort on big, known markets. So they miss out on the small idea which creates it's own market and becomes a big market.