The cost efficiency pendulum has definitely swung right back. There is very little excess cash in budgets these days. There may still be a lot of inefficiencies in these businesses, however finding it is hard.
2. Get the innovative juices flowing, by getting your teams involved in start-up programs: I was recently talking with Mick Liubinskas about their Academy courses for getting corporates to act more like startups, in terms of innovation and agility in the marketplace. They have started delivering the same counsel that they provide to their own startups to corporate execs. It is early to tell on the success of this in driving innovation into large corporations, however the feedback from the participants has been very promising.
3. Prototype small ideas lots of times, and be ready to say I was wrong, ans so what do we need to do to make it better: This is basically a numbers game. Practice makes perfect, and the more you practice the small innovation, the more you will learn about how to do it better. The faster you can get it wrong lots of times to get it right..... etc. you get the idea. Although this is the simplest idea of all, it is probably the hardest. We all unfortunately have a fear of failure, that we all struggle to get over. This idea basically says to get over it, you are wrong, just really depends how wrong you are, and how quickly you can make it right. It also means that when you do get it wrong, it needs to be on a small enough scale so that the damage (if any) is small.
4. Front line knows best (and worst): Innovation may be as simple as fixing the errors.... The staff that are at the coal face of your business see errors and problems everyday, however they do not share it. Try getting out there and talking about it with them. Note, they will also struggle to articulate errors and problems (especially in hungry cost cutting environments like today), for fear of repercussions, or that the information being used to get rid of more jobs. So tread carefully, but listen more to the 'little guy' in your organisation.
5. Get a consultant in like me: .... you can make your own judgements.
Unfortunately this causes the problem of not having the time or the money to 'innovate'. All companies want to innovate like Google, or Atlassian, or Facebook, however doing it takes more than just wanting it to happen. Management from the top down needs to do something about it, and tweak the operating model in order to give innovation some space.
The Google 20% time works for Google, Atlassian's innovation parties / workshops work well for them, and Facebook's try and fail fast methods also deliver results. For an existing company that did not start this way, needs to adjust. Some ideas:
1. Bring back small discretionary budget allocations for management: This is the I can throw $50k at this idea, and see what happens. If it fails I will not get fired, however if I don't do it, then one of my peers will use their $50k successfully, then I should be fired. Small innovative companies that sell to larger companies then know that they have a budget in which they can pitch, and potentially get a hook into the large company. The manager can then get his managers to think about ideas, and get innovative companies in to pitch ideas.... the innovation ideas and the ability to execute a small test starts to flow. For a large company could use 20 of these discretionary budgets across their business, and see what starts to come out, and they have spent $1m dollars, which for most large companies is better spent than advertising or an office fit-out that could wait perhaps one more year.
3. Prototype small ideas lots of times, and be ready to say I was wrong, ans so what do we need to do to make it better: This is basically a numbers game. Practice makes perfect, and the more you practice the small innovation, the more you will learn about how to do it better. The faster you can get it wrong lots of times to get it right..... etc. you get the idea. Although this is the simplest idea of all, it is probably the hardest. We all unfortunately have a fear of failure, that we all struggle to get over. This idea basically says to get over it, you are wrong, just really depends how wrong you are, and how quickly you can make it right. It also means that when you do get it wrong, it needs to be on a small enough scale so that the damage (if any) is small.
4. Front line knows best (and worst): Innovation may be as simple as fixing the errors.... The staff that are at the coal face of your business see errors and problems everyday, however they do not share it. Try getting out there and talking about it with them. Note, they will also struggle to articulate errors and problems (especially in hungry cost cutting environments like today), for fear of repercussions, or that the information being used to get rid of more jobs. So tread carefully, but listen more to the 'little guy' in your organisation.
5. Get a consultant in like me: .... you can make your own judgements.
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