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Digital Business insights: What is innovation all about?
“IF I’D ASKED my customers what they wanted, they would have told me a faster horse.” - Henry Ford.
DON’T ask somebody who doesn’t know, for an answer that defines solutions … ask them to more clearly define their problems.
Then think about them.
Is there a better way to get the job done?
Big organisations and government are blinded by and tied to a historical investment in better ways to get their job done more efficiently, consistently and effectively.
The business practices they use evolved during the industrial revolution as manufacturing and business processes were segmented, compartmentalised and departmentalised to ensure greater efficiency. This approach was successful for hundreds of years right up until the latter part of the 20th century and much of our society is still structured in this way.
It helped us build machines, improve our health, win wars, produce more food, go to the moon and get us to where we are today.
But what was good practice then is disabling now.
Big businesses and governments have established cultures that have evolved around efficiency and productivity and best practice and profit with associated rewards for employees who best support these approaches.
Employees who don’t support them are encouraged to move on. “I’m sorry, you don’t fit into the culture of our organisation.”
This is fine in periods of economic stability. It is fine when organisations are growing and maturing.
It is not fine in the current period of digital disruption and it is not fine when organisations have completely lost the skills and ability to respond with intelligence to change.
Today, we see all organisations being impacted by digital disruption and only a few even recognise the source of their new problems.
And it is not about the computers and digital devices. It is about the impact that more connection, more collaboration and more integration and convergence are having on our world.
As far as responding with intelligence and vision to the new challenges, there is little evidence to suggest any success, whether we look at government, large established businesses, academia, unions, associations, chambers of commerce or not-for-profits.
It is not for lack of intelligent people within those organisations. It is for lack of ways and means to engage their brainpower with these new problems and challenges.
The effort required to respond agilely in solving societal problems is impacted by the resilience of the cultures and structures that have been built since the industrial revolution to deliver and maintain stable efficiency, growth, productivity and profit.
And the open mindedness and vision required to recognise, understand and respond to external and internal digital disruption is way beyond most organisations.
Even though they have powerful resources – money, smart people and influence – gathering and focusing these resources upon the problem is beyond them.
There is a conflict between talk and action. Big businesses can speak about innovation and they do. But they don’t do it.
The culture and structure of big business and government actually punishes innovation, in the same way our immune system attacks and kills bacteria and viruses. Foreign. Out of sync. Not attuned.
It is ingrained. It is done without thinking. It is done subtly. It is done automatically. That is why whistle-blowers have such a hard time.
Anyone pointing out a flaw or inconsistency is branded a traitor and attacked. Edward Snowden is just one of a long line of people punished by cultural immune systems.
It is even done under the guise of innovation. The real potential innovators, the mavericks, the oddballs within organisations are moved on.
Risk is not rewarded, it is fined. Experiments are not allowed when they threaten or interfere with daily process and operations. They cannot be justified under a regime of business as usual.
The ‘shareholders’ are used as an excuse to stifle innovation.
Processes are put in place to mitigate risk not encourage it. Can’t do anything without more research. Must put it to more committees, more focus groups, give it more consideration, take more time.
Everything that waters down, dilutes, slows down and stifles innovative change. Avoids leadership, spreads responsibility.
Government can speak about innovation and it does. It even includes the word in its departmental titles.
Department of innovation?
Dream on. Not going to happen.
Government spends a lot of time and money on conferences and events discussing and promoting the idea of innovation.
But it can’t do it.
Government and business continually trot out various combinations of approaches that worked “once upon a time” in the good old days of the late 20th century.
Back when business plans were possible. Back in an environment with milestones and targets.
An environment with landmarks, and reference points and KPIs.
The past. History.
We are now all adrift in the digital ocean, with no landmarks, just waves of change.
There are no borders in the information ocean.
In an environment of more connection, more collaboration and more integration, what used to be none of my business now becomes all of our business.
In an environment of more connection, more collaboration and more integration, the implications are profound.
In an environment of more connection, more collaboration and more integration, how do you define what your business is or isn’t?
That is a tough question for Telstra, Microsoft, HP, Yahoo, IBM and the others.
How do you speak about borders and boundaries and constituencies when there are none?
That is tough for councils, mayors, states, premiers and nations.
In an environment of more connection, more collaboration and more integration, how do you go it alone?
You don’t. Collaboration and shared value is the new currency.
Google has got it right in many ways. It just looks at whatever it decides it wants to look at and gets on with it. Search. Maps. Health. Death. Whatever.
There is an overwhelming amount of data about past and present.
There is no data about the future.
Just imagination and vision.
That is what innovation is all about.
John Sheridan is CEO of Digital Business insights, an organisation based in Brisbane, Australia, which focuses on helping businesses and communities adapt to, and flourish in, the new digital world. He is the author of Connecting the Dots and getting more out of the digital revolution. Digital Business insights has been researching and analysing the digital revolution for more than 12 years and has surveyed more than 50,000 businesses, conducting in-depth case study analysis on more than 350 organisations and digital entrepreneurs.
