I assure you, post-its alone won’t do the trick

Why is Innovation so F*** Hard?

Maria Flyvbjerg Bo
Aug 8, 2017 · 4 min read

“Innovation is a prerequisite for sustained growth. No other path to profitable growth can be sustained over time.”

A.G. Lafley, former CEO, Procter & Gamble

Innovation is the catalyst to growth in organizations and ultimately, in our society. Schumpeter argued that industries have to innovate to create better and more effective processes and products, and that “creative destruction” is the essential factor in capitalism. In organizational contexts, the ability to successfully innovate and translate innovative activity into tangible performance improvements is seen as crucial in order to stay efficient, productive, competitive, and thereby retain or gain market share.

However, we see over and over again that large enterprises are downright horrible at turning ideas into viable new businesses.

Innovation is central to organizational survival, growth and a competitive position, and experts agree that it’s the only sustainable strategy for creating value in the long term. Companies that manage to successfully implement a strategy for innovating are growing and making the most profits.

However, we see over and over again that large enterprises are downright horrible at turning ideas into viable new businesses. In fact, “…it is less than one percent of all firms that have made innovation a part of everyone’s responsibility, every single day.” (Hamel, 2012) and many organizations are still struggling with successfully innovating: “Most successful enterprises falter when it comes to pioneering radically new products and services.” (O’Reilly & Tushman, 2004). In many organizations, it seems that innovation happens in spite of, and not because of, the established structures and systems.

Most organizations simply don’t have a strategy for innovating.

It seems that most enterprises have innovation as one of the goals in their grand plan or even as a central part of their vision or mission statement. Still, they’re lacking the strategy on how to get there: Most organizations simply don’t have a strategy for innovating. A strategy for becoming the innovative, new thinking company that is on everyone’s lips, or just to — once in awhile, but systematically — create new products or solutions that are somewhat innovative. Or at least an app that doesn’t launch when most of the competitors seem to have gotten there already. And if the enterprise does have an innovation strategy, it’s often a well-kept secret that only a certain part of the organization knows about, such as the company’s “innovation lab” or the executives.

I hope that we can all agree that a strategy for fostering successful innovation is needed — or actually, it’s crucial — within most organizations.

Actually, it seems that the larger a company gets, the worse it gets at innovating.

There are several theories, strategies, and frameworks for becoming innovative. Such as Christensen (2000), Day et al. (2001), Galbraith (1999), Kuemmerle (2009), Sharma (1999), and Vargo & Lusch (2004) just to name a few. Despite all these theories, the articles in Harvard Business Review and the heavy leadership books on innovation published by prominent university professors, entrepreneurs, and CEOs, it seems that the magic bullet for successfully innovating in large organizations has not been found yet.

What takes a startup three months, take large enterprises three years (or forever).

Entrepreneurship and innovation are normally associated with small, fast-growing companies. And despite the fact that large organizations have resources and capabilities that most startups don’t, empirical evidence shows that smaller firms are more likely to introduce major innovations. As firms grow larger, they tend to lose much of their flexibility and agility. What takes a startup three months, take large enterprises three years (or forever). Actually, it seems that the larger a company gets, the worse it gets at innovating.

Why is innovating so f*** hard for large organizations? And why does it seem so easy for many startups?

I’d love to hear your ‘war stories’ and take on this. I’ll be back with my two cents later.

(Pssst, don’t get fooled by the cover picture: I don’t think post-its alone will do the trick — Nor will the fancy Hipster Labs with Hay and Muuto furniture)

Sources & inspiration:

Bordia, R., Kronenberg, E., Neely, D. (2005) Innovation’s OrgDNA. Booz Allen Hamilton Inc.

Christensen, Clayton M. (1997): The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail. Massachusetts: Harvard Business School Press.

Christensen, Clayton M. & Overdorf, Michael (2000). Meeting the Challenge of Disruptive Change. Harvard Business Review, March-April.

Day, Jonathan D., Mang, Paul Y., Richter, Ansgar & Roberts, John (2001). The Innovative Organization: Why New Ventures Need More than a Room of Their Own. The McKinsey Quarterly, Number 2.

Galbraith, Jay R. (1999). Designing the Innovating Organization. Center for Effective Organizations. Marshall School of Business. USC, Los Angeles.

Hamel, Gary (2012). What Matters Now: How to Win in a World of Relentless Change, Ferocious Competition, and Unstoppable Innovation. John Wiley & Sons.

Kuemmerle, Walter, (2009). Innovation in Large Firms. The Oxford Handbook of Entrepreneurship. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

Sharma, Anurag (1999): Central Dilemmas of Managing Innovation in Large Firms. California Management Review 41(3).

Vargo, Stephen and Lusch, Robert (2004), “Evolving to a New Dominant Logic for Marketing” Journal of Marketing 68(January), 1–17.

Maria Flyvbjerg Bo

Written by

Teaching companies to disrupt themselves • Serial-entrepreneur

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