By Fast Company Expert Blogger Doug Sundheim
First published February 3, 2011
Innovation is one of the most pressing topics on senior leaders’ minds these days. Everyone is trying to figure out how to identify and commercialize the next big thing. But beyond the next big thing today, they’re all looking for sustainable innovation practices for tomorrow.
One of the hottest topics now is figuring out how to build a predictable business innovation infrastructure to identify and commercialize the next big thing on an ongoing basis. One-time innovation is a “single idea problem” which can be likened to finding a fish for the organization to eat now — sustainable innovation is a “capacity-building problem” which can be likened to teaching the organization to fish so it can continue to thrive now and in the future.
Regarding sustainable innovation, I’ve noticed a disturbing trend.
Successful sustainable innovation has three components:
- innovation process (how do we get from innovative ideas to commercialization?)
- innovation management (what structures do we need to support us?)
- innovation culture (who do we need to be to get there?)
All three components are important, but if you forced me to pick only one to foster innovation, I’d choose innovation culture–because it’s the only one for driving innovation capacity. Innovation process and management systems do not. They are critically important, but they’re enablers, not drivers.
Somehow a lot of leaders miss this fact. It’s as if they think business innovation is a technical challenge looking for solutions that can be engineered with the right processes and systems. It can’t be. More than anything, successful sustainable innovation is the result of senior leaders’ beliefs and behaviors. Are they role modeling the smart risk-taking they want others to engage in? Are they supporting others to take smart risks?
If they’re not, the best innovative ideas will never predictably produce solid and successful results because people will be too afraid to experiment and act.
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