Innovation Horizons - Playing the Short vs Long Game

In the previous Innovation Weekly article, we talked about key considerations when formulating how innovation success should be measured. Well, this article series failed one of its own success measures, which was to release articles with weekly cadence. Look at the circumstances though. An outbreak, which until such time as it was declared a pandemic was still met with mixed responses - some nations were already crippled due to the overwhelming demand for medical resources and expertise, while other nations were still in denial that they were at risk. Where are we now? Well, pretty much every business in the world is trying to survive - trying to figure out how their cash flow can sustain them, trying to identify alternate supply chains, trying to define critical roles, trying to become leaner. Business continuity is the highest priority discussion in the boardroom these days.

In some ways, I'm glad this article's release was stalled. What this led to was an opportunity to witness a live case study in business critical innovation play out around the world - innovation through adversity, innovation to survive. Businesses have had to figure out how to move entire teams, departments and offices to remote working models. Jobs requiring onsite work are directly impacted by national lock-downs. Employees are concerned about their jobs. Management teams are looking at automation opportunities. The future of work and future skills have leapfrogged to today. The future of work is now the 'present day' of work. Everything is changing. In fact, everything has already changed.

How fitting then that the topic intended for this article is focused on the time horizon for innovation - that is, what innovation looks like in the short term versus the long term.

A Shift to Experimentation

With such a rapid shift to different operating models and a necessity to consider shedding extra financial and operational burden, while trying to sustain employee well-being, every company has been and is still looking at how to fine tune their business. What this breeds is a call for ideas from employees, customers and suppliers to gather, validate and prioritize innovations worth implementing. Because of the nature of a national or global lock-down, these innovations need swift implementation and almost immediate gains. Companies not used to experimentation techniques would now be open to trying anything to see if incremental value can be gained. This, almost tribal or primal response, is a natural survivalist approach and is typically found within startups, niche businesses and those directly impacted by such a significant change to their ecosystem.

One case study that is rapidly unfolding is that of Mustard Foods - a London food production company that, prior to 13 March, was producing 30 tonnes of food a week across 3 shifts, 5 days a week, for 32 restaurant groups across the UK, Ireland, France, Germany and Portugal. Due to the pandemic, initial instructions by governments for restaurants and pubs to close and then national lockdowns, this substantial operation was abruptly halted. Within days, Mustard Foods set up a Shopify site to offer home delivery of meals to the public with an initial focus on London-based delivery. While orders were low initially, this is increasing and has led to them supplying completely new markets by feeding front-line doctors, nurses and other healthcare staff through a partnership with the Critical NHS volunteer group, as well as supplying another client with 20000 meals a day for vulnerable children. If the UK follows the right trajectory with regard to managing the outbreak, their production output could reach 20 tonnes by May. The team at Mustard Foods hopes to see this climb beyond that, while now serving new niche markets.

Determined businesses - often purpose-driven, where survival is dependent on quick thinking, where founders succumb to months without drawing a salary in order to plough every bit of revenue back into serving that purpose, or where the well-being of employees comes before profit - will benefit from this survivalist mindset while gaining further loyalty and support from the employees and other stakeholders who have chosen to align with that company's purpose.

Once this wave of global adversity innovation subsides and some form of international trade normality returns, the businesses that choose to continue in this manner - keeping an ear close to the ground, reacting swiftly to tiny ripples of change before they snowball - will continue to reap the benefits of a truly highly innovative company culture. Even for companies with legacy brands and products, there is no room to ignore considering an additional high agility go-to-market strategy with a potentially completely new range of services or products to ride through a period of such volatility. Beyond the pandemic era, companies adopting experimentation with full executive support and short adoption time frames will be able to capitalize on the true power of this rapid growth attribute.

An eye on the big picture

While a short term pivot may very well lead to a sustainable business model, there are many businesses that are forced to put everything on pause or to keep plodding along in the hope that things return to normal in the not too distant future. Now is a great time to be looking at business strategy, product strategy, potential markets for expansion, employee role transformations or opportunities to trim extra weight.

Due to the massive global economic impact of the pandemic, the impact to financial markets and the loss of revenue across industries, there is a general hesitation for companies to invest in particular projects. This is due to the re-prioritization of resources to cater for short term needs. Investment in IT, specifically cloud computing, is already on the rise as more businesses come to terms with the need to have teams connect from home (or in future, from anywhere), to shift to digital-first as a strategy (selling more online than in stores, for example), and to look at reducing maintenance efforts and overheads incurred by running systems on-premise.

Healthcare protection systems will see a massive investment, as governments and healthcare providers will look to bolster current innovations with optimized processes, new systems, additional research and future infrastructure that will have long-term gains. Once immediate needs are resolved, other industry sectors will look at more robust and simplified ways of working, which leads to an investment in tech, in specific skills, and other industry-specific collaboration initiatives (a patient data blockchain comes to mind). The era of niche outsourced services, as businesses across the globe look to control spend and focus on core business, is brewing.

From the consumer's perspective, the expectation has evolved. They will want more access and engagement virtually, more information for free (given the open access to numerous systems and tools provided by so many vendors during the pandemic), more home based delivery, and more relevance in the content that has been shared with them. Families will continue to express concern around their kids' and elders' exposure to disease and risk, and I predict a more insular approach to our day-to-day lives. Businesses, regardless of their offering, should be looking at the current and future mindset of the individual consumer to understand both why and where they need to look at future-proofing their business.

------

This #InnovationWeekly series covers topics on innovation concepts, strategy, methodologies and implementation. Follow the author and/or the hashtag to receive these updates in your feed.

Thank you for reading, and stay tuned for the next article, where we look at what it takes to build a productive innovation team.