Is Innovation important?

A simple Google search on the topic “is innovation important” yields 307 million results in 0.58 seconds, so my first guess is that it’s an important topic and is perhaps not easily explainable.
As I go deeper into some of these results, to validate my guess, people generally tend to agree. There is talk about out of the box solutions, using technology, reaching new customers, generating value (by creation or disruption), bringing significant changes to society and so on. Innovation clearly has a role to play in corporate lives — which is where my post focuses.
The posts go on to talk about the benefits of innovation, in the corporate context these include: increased ROI, a better bottom-line, creating a sustainable enterprise etc. Let’s talk about a few examples of innovation: the Moon mission, Nokia, and the entertaining MRI scan.
The chosen examples are deliberately very different. When President Kennedy announced the plan “to go to the Moon in this decade” it was a call to action to create a level of innovation not seen before.
We all know the Nokia story and while the more popular chat is around its demise it’s important to reflect on how it reached there. I fully quote text from The Game Changer by A.G. Lafley and Ram Charan.
“Peter Drucker once said that the purpose of a business enterprise is to create a customer. Nokia became number one in India by using innovation to create 200 million customers. Through observing the unique needs of Indian customers, particularly in rural villages where most of the population resides, it segmented them in new ways and put new features on handsets relevant to their unique needs.”
The third story, on GE Healthcare, is my personal favorite. An MRI scan can create a negative impact in the minds of the most stable adults, imagine what children go through? It’s quite interesting that GE healthcare invented the GE adventure series to make the experience easier for young children — they focus on making the imaging process playtime and turn the procedure into an adventure. Full marks to the designer Doug Dietz.
In my second guess, innovation is over-rated when it comes to talking about it but innovation is highly under-rated when it comes to delivering.
Let’s dig a little deeper into this theory. Let’s call upon Drucker once again, as he gone to extent of saying that if an established organization doesn’t innovate, it faces decline and extinction. Various other texts also call innovation crucial to the growth and survival of organizations. So Innovate or Die?
How seriously do executives take Innovation?
According to a PwC report, 93% of executives indicate that organic growth through innovation will drive the greater proportion of their revenue growth.
So executives do take innovation seriously but is innovation easy and replicable? There is a lot on those topics so I am going to start an introduction to a few principles in what may possibly become a multi-post series depending on the conversation this generates.
I am going to focus on a few contra-principles (some of us like principles of practice, I like to talk about the opposite) but to give perspective I am also including the accepted principles.
Accepted Principle 1: Innovation can only happen in mature eco-systems

Contra Principle 1: Innovation is most required in eco-systems that are not so mature. Is it easy? Clearly not but there are larger, more sustainable opportunities available in these eco-systems. See the example of Nokia given above. However, innovation clearly has to be repeated and is not a one-time activity.
From a personal standpoint, I think innovation is extremely important for India especially as we have been a cost (management) economy and are clearly running out of avenues to manage cost any further.
Accepted Principle 2: Innovation (R&D) has a very long cycle

Contra Principle 2: Innovation is a constant process and is byte sized. Innovation is how things are done and not just what things are done. So innovation is not just about products or about long-term research yields like drug formulations.
Take the example of UBER, it started with the basic premise of hailing cabs using mobile phones. Or, Starbucks which reinvented the coffee shop experience. What’s the R&D in that? Simply the power of observation and synthesis.
Accepted Principle 3:Innovation is tough and can only be a process run by top tier management
Contra Principle 3: Innovation is around us and outside our glass palaces. Albert Einstein famously said that “we cannot solve the problem with the same thinking we used when we created them”. As management, we end up in a situation of escalation commitment and are unable to change from our deep-rooted solutions that have worked for us in the past.

What we also fail to differentiate are the signals of noise from our customer (and the peripheral customer) as we end up accepting those as a product market fit issue for a segment that we don’t serve. There is no denying two facts: (one) a product/service is meant to serve customers — so you can only learn from the customer, and (two) if we don’t trust our foot soldiers to be smart enough to observe the extremes then we are in the wrong business.
It’s more about how we are able to synthesize the information. Also, let’s remember that People want to be part of growth, not endless cost cutting. The moment you are able to use that a base for innovation there is the possibility to create magic.
Finally, I will end this article with my favorite quote from Mckinsey.
Like short skirts, innovation has traditionally swung into and out of fashion: popular in good times and tossed back into the closet in downturns.
For organizations that are looking to jump-start their innovation journey. We at Pearson Professional Programs have launched a learning journey “Innovation by Design” in partnership with IDEO U.
IDEO is a global design firm with over 30 years experience in human-centered design. Consistently ranked as one of the most innovative companies in the world, IDEO specializes in design thinking and creative leadership. Participants can learn IDEO’s approach to design thinking through IDEO U — IDEO’s online learning school.

As part of Innovation by Design, your team works on a real-world business challenge to sharpen their creative problem-solving skills. They put their learnings directly into action and receive feedback from Pearson’s business coaches to deepen their practice. To know more about the program contact us by visiting http://pearson-professional.com/custom-programs/ideo/
This article was originally posted on LinkedIn Pulse.
Photo credits: Rhema Kallianpur, Nick De Partee, Denys Nevozhai on Unsplash
