Redefining Innovation: From Trendy Concept to Practical Value Creation

“Innovation” is an interesting word, but not for the reason you might think. We have written about it many times, and I am willing to continue the effort since it seems like it just doesn't sink in. However, I am not planning to simply reiterate the definitions and the meaning, even though they are important. In this article, I will explore the fact that innovation as a concept is becoming increasingly discredited, why it is happening, and what we can do about it.

The Traditional Way

Let’s assume you are new to the field of innovation management and have just been hired as an Innovation Lead or maybe got a promotion within the company. When I say “Innovation Leader,” it could mean VP of Innovation, Head of Innovation, Director of Innovation, or some other related title. In fact, the specific title does not really matter. Based on many conversations with people with such titles, they all do the same thing.

Since you just assumed this position, you need to start figuring out what it means to be an Innovation Leader, what the actual expectations are, and how to achieve them. Yes, you heard it right. YOU need to figure that out because nobody can actually guide you. To be more precise, every organization will have a different definition of it. This is part of the problem, but more on that later.

Naturally, your next step is to start gathering information from the web or ChatGPT, right? After all, where else would you look if you're the lead of innovation in the company?

If we search for the word "innovation," we'll get just over 2.6 billion results. Impressive, but not helpful. So, let's narrow it down to something like "how to innovate." That's much better, with only 292 million results. While I'm not trying to teach anyone how to search on Google, I want to point out that there's a lot of information on the topic online, but not all of it is relevant.

You might say, of course, there's a lot of junk on the web, just focus on the first few results, and you'd be absolutely correct. That's exactly what I did. I went through the first couple of pages and found the following articles: "5 Steps to Being an Innovator," "7 Steps for Becoming More Innovative at Work," "10 Ways to Be More Innovative," "How to Innovate: 15 Steps," "21 Great Ways to Innovate," and so on. I encourage everyone to search for it and see what you find. Each of these articles offers completely different ways to innovate.

My point is that there is a good reason for this mess, nobody really knows how to innovate.

The Innovation Team

Once our innovation leaders have somewhat figured out the process to follow, they need a team. After all, they're leaders, right? In my experience, I've observed a few options for this.

Dedicated Innovation Team

These leaders might potentially get an actual team that's supposed to innovate. However, I'm not entirely sure about the purpose of this so-called "innovation team." Are they the only ones innovating, with the company fully relying on them? What about everyone else? Is the rest of the organization not entitled or allowed to innovate?

We've heard statements like "we're defining and maintaining the innovation culture." Well, what exactly does "innovation culture" mean? We've never gotten a solid answer to this question. Every leader seems to have a different vision of what constitutes an innovation culture.

Everyone is an Innovation Team

Another approach we've seen is that Innovation Leaders don't have a dedicated team at all. Instead, they're responsible for driving and implementing innovation processes across the entire organization.

This presents a different challenge. Every team is already occupied with their own responsibilities. Taking on an initiative they don't own is often the last thing they want to do. We can all imagine what the outcome will be.

Lone Wolf

This is when Innovation Leads work alone without a team and aren't expected to define processes for others. Instead, they're tasked with generating innovations themselves. Their job is to conceive ideas and then persuade stakeholders to support them. If they succeed in getting buy-in, the company invests in further development—design, implementation, marketing, and so on. It raises similar questions: What about the rest of the organization? Are they not permitted to innovate? Are their ideas considered less credible? Moreover, who ultimately owns these products? Without clear ownership, the innovations are likely to fail.

The Cost of Innovation

A few companies report significant value from innovation leads, particularly the "lone wolves." Here's how one describes their process:

"I conduct extensive research and generate numerous ideas. Then, I analyze which ideas have the greatest potential. Once I've done this and secured management buy-in, we implement these products. Typically, 1 in 10 implementations performs exceptionally well."

Do you notice anything problematic? I do. What I see is the cost—an enormous one. In fact, it's ten times larger than it should be. I wonder if these companies factor this into their calculations, or if they only consider the ROI of a single successful project.

Consequences

As we've seen, innovation leads often don't know what to do when they start their position. They may not have a team, and if they do, it's often ineffective. When they work alone, they're swimming against the current.

The result is grim. The outcome of this innovation work is discouraging because the company doesn't see enough value in it. Simply put, not enough value is produced given the current situation.

In recent years, we've seen numerous layoffs. Guess who's first out the door? If you said innovation leads and their teams, you're spot on.

No matter how hard these folks work, they haven't been given the right training, proper tools, or support for the job. How can anyone expect better results?

The saddest part is that nobody really cares. Many organizations created these positions just for the sake of having them. It's the trend, and they must report to their stakeholders that they're "innovative." Am I wrong?

Generate and Deliver Value

The question we need to answer is how to fix this. I believe the solution is quite simple and should be clear at this point in the article. The most important part of innovation efforts for both the company and its customers is to create value for both.

As we've established multiple times, innovation is always a solution to someone's pressing problem. This means that to generate value from innovation, we must be able to identify the right problems to solve and create effective solutions. And when I say solutions, I don't mean coming up with compromises or throwing more money at the problem. I mean actually solving the root cause!

With the millions of recommendations out there we lack practical application of how to innovate. However, the study of innovation is the study of science and learning of the right tools, methods, and processes. Without that, innovation as a concept will diminish.

Innovation is a company-wide effort, not just the responsibility of an "Innovation Team." Relying on a single person or small group to generate enough value for the entire organization is unsustainable. For a company to be truly innovative, every employee must understand and apply innovation principles in practice. Then and only then can an organization rightfully claim to be innovative.

Join the conversation and let's work together to improve innovation processes.