Six Short-Cuts to Innovation
A good idea beats the dull weight of money every time. The greatest start-ups are traditionally born in a garage: Microsoft, Google, Skype and most Silicon Valley innovation worked with the reality that every entrepreneur quickly discovers: their ambition was exceeded only by their poverty.
The big question is how established organisations can innovate.
The evidence is not good. Innovation is popular in theory, but not in practice. No-one gets fired for failing to take a risk, failing to spot a new market.
Plenty of people get fired for taking a risk and failing. Risk is like kryptonite to many organisations. Innovation without risk a like sky-diving without a parachute: you know it will end in tears.
We can not teach dinosaurs to dance and we cannot get large organisations to act like Silicon Valley start ups. But any company can still be innovative.
Here are six ways to innovate without having to be a creative genius or a risk junkie:
- Copy an idea Discount airlines were not invented by Ryanair: the idea was imported from the US and Southwest Airlines. Let others do the innovation for you.
- Solve the problem Akio Morita, the founder of Sony, saw gangs with boom boxes on their shoulders. He saw their problem: the need for music on the move. He solved the problem and the world was introduced to the Walkman and its successor, Apple's iPod. James Dyson took 5,127 prototypes to solve the problem of vacuum cleaners losing suction.
- Experiment The dotcom boom and bust was a massive market experiment in making money from the web. Boo.com, Webvan went down in flames. Amazon won. Google discovered paid search and won, while AOL and Yahoo! were still testing subscription models and banner advertising. Even the smartest brains can't predict what will work in advance. The only test that counts is the market. If you don't pay for a ticket, you can't win the prize.
- Get lucky. Virgin Atlantic emerged as the successor to the ill-fated Laker. Both had a discount model. Virgin had a 12-seat Upper Class for Richard Branson (that's him on the right of the photo above) and his music industry mates. It was great, word spread and Branson had the wit to realise he'd hit a gold mine. He built the premium traffic and avoided Laker's fate.
- Act little, act often. Most businesses don't even need breakthrough innovation. They need incremental innovation. This can be process improvement (total quality management) or product improvement.
- Ask everyone. Top managers do not know all the answers. Knowledge is dispersed. The challenge is to gather it in. P&G's Connect programme looks for product ideas from universities, customers, alumni and the public. Many of the best process improvement ideas in TQM come from the shop floor.