Marco, your article is timely, well written and spot on! Companies are indeed now finally prioritizing innovation in pursuit of productivity and growth. Unfortunately many of the Fortune 500 today find themselves operating business models where growth opportunities are increasingly dominated by the novel creation of new digital services and capabilities. This new terrain for growth and innovation presents a unique problem to service and information based companies (financial services, media, etc) who until recently shunned the idea that they increasingly need to think of themselves as “software companies”. In fact, many CIO’s proudly espoused strategies in the last decade that they should NOT be in the business of designing, building, and deploying digital solutions because it’s not the companies core competency. Fast forward to today and the sober truth is this; no company can outsource creativity and digital product development to others, they must become software innovators themselves. And here’s where the productivity / innovation relationship hits a wall. Today’s large company organizational structures, governance,and finance practices, leadership behaviors, and culture are all hostile to the way today’s most successful digital innovators work. In these traditional companies the greatest investment in innovation required is in the complete redesign of work-life itself. The reinvention of management, organizational structures, and the elimination of the bureaucratic managing class, that outnumber those actually doing the creative work required to fuel growth, are where real productivity breakthroughs will emerge. These kinds of organizational innovations can’t be outsourced or purchased off the shelf either… and ironically, these are fundamentally human / cultural challenges, not digital. So now we come full circle. While digital is a huge enabler of productivity and growth, freeing employees from the tyranny and burden of the company itself is the pre-requisite to realizing the benefits of digital.
