INNOBLOG

Time and again, firms pronounce their goal of creating a Culture of Innovation. Many executives, it seems, feel that the ability to create sustainable growth is largely rooted in the attitudes and behaviors that govern a firm. They see snippets of how the culture of certain innovative firms can manifest itself"from kooky work environments to frequent, direct communication with the CEO"and hope these practices can engender a transformation of their organizations and business prospects.

Much of this conventional thinking about a culture of innovation is deeply misguided. Establishing a replicable innovation process takes a lot more than redesigning your workplace and embracing flip-flops. Culture is fundamentally a lagging variable: It is the result of a set of decisions about strategy, structure, people, and processes. Starting a transformation by focusing on culture is like selling a failing car by changing the brand. A brand is the result"not the cause"of a set of correct design, strategy, marketing, and other organizational decisions.

In a recent Strategy & Innovation article we debunk some widespread myths and lay out a viable route to building an innovative culture, a route that is quite distinct from common perceptions. To read the full article, subscribe to S&I here.

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In the complex sport of American football, teams rely on playbooks as thick as the Manhattan phone directory. But when it comes to creating innovative growth businesses--which is at least as complicated as professional football--most companies have not developed detailed game plans. Indeed, many managers have concluded that a fog enshrouds the world of innovation, obscuring high-potential opportunities.

This article summarizes Innosights in-the-field work helping companies create growth through innovation to suggest that companies that take the right actions can in fact penetrate this fog. Using examples from companies such as Procter & Gamble, Intuit, Ethicon Endo-Surgery, Dow Corning, Teradyne, and Motorola, the article describes straightforward steps companies can take to more predictably create new growth businesses.

By creating a playbook for new growth, using it to identify the best opportunities, investing a little to learn a lot, and changing the corporate discourse, companies can develop a process that produces high-quality innovations more quickly and with sharply lower up-front investment.

If you were to ask a group of people who recently moved into a new home what jobs they were looking to get done, they may have a tough time answering your question. However if you phrase this question differently and ask them what frustrated them the most when they moved in their new home, they may mention "having privacy and knowing that the neighbors (or potential burglars!) aren't looking into my home".

Having just moved into a new home myself and being faced with this dilemma, I was very pleased to come across the (appropriately named) product RediShade - the temporary paper window shade that sells for $4.99 at home improvement stores and other retailers. The temporary shade is sold in one size and then can be easily cut to fit virtually any window. This "good enough" product does not compete with blinds and curtains but rather with the old bed sheets that homeowners and college dorm dwellers use to cover up their bare windows. It targets a job that is important to the customer and where there is a high degree of frustration (I don't know about you, but shopping for blinds is not my idea of a good time!). RediShade is by no means a perfect product but it is a perfect solution to a the job of "give me quick way to get privacy in my residence".

Do you have other examples of solutions like this that provide quick fixes to common problems?

Innovation is generally conceived as an act of creation, bringing to life a new process, product or business model. However, there is cost to the forward march - some things get left behind.

While companies tend to view new products and services as replacements for the old, slowly disassembling their historical portfolios, there are often cultural ramifications for those whose careers were built on the creation of those very products. In a recent article about Lego in Fortune Magazine, the very human side of this process was poignantly expressed:

Knudstorp's cultural revolution also reached into the cultlike quarters of Lego's design team... To save on manufacturing costs, Lego has cut the number of pieces, or "elements," as they are known - for example, eliminating different versions of a little chef, some with a mustache, some without.

"People had personal relationships with elements," says design director Dorthe Kjaerulff, describing how her staff fought to keep favorites alive but in the end created a memorial to the discontinued pieces, complete with little black crosses. (Only the chef with the mustache survives.)

As the company boldly charges forward towards new uncharted territory, it is important to recognize the contributions of those who brought you to this point. Because today's leaders will read the tearful epithets to tomorrow's hottest product.

We write about Google a lot on this blog, and for good reason (no, we don?t own shares of the stock ? at least I don?t?but many of us use gmail and desktop and talk and so on). To keep it fresh I?ll keep this one quick. The New York Times reports this morning that Google is releasing a beta version of a spreadsheet program that will compete with Microsoft Excel. Unsurprisingly, they are attacking a niche that has great disruptive potential. The program is intended to facilitate the upkeep and sharing of lists and simple functions. It won?t have the same sheer computing chops as Excel (no macros, for example) but will compete in other ways that figure to appeal to a broad base of users ? it will be easy to use, convenient to access (free on the Internet!), and will facilitate real-time collaboration (up to ten people will be able to work on a spreadsheet at once). Google understands and sees opportunity in the fact that few, if any, take full advantage of Excel?s famed and feared functionality and that many people use Excel as a compensating behavior ? the Times cites youth soccer coaches using it for manual databasing of their team roster, I?ve known people who make chore lists in Excel, etc. If successful, Spreadsheet will make it easier for people to accomplish mundane tasks in their lives (Jobs to be Done, in Disruptive Innovation parlance) and may well become indispensable to many. The Times says it best: ?The spreadsheet service is another step in Google's steady march toward creating its own computing universe that is an alternative to desktop PC software now dominated by Microsoft.? Google is bringing simple databasing down to the masses; the disruption of Microsoft continues. See "Google Takes Aim at Excel," The New York Times, 6/6/06 Sign up for a test drive: http://www.google.com/googlespreadsheets/try_out.html