I’ve never been a theoretician of processes, and always believed in intuitive approach to getting things done, but recent establishment of Innovation Process had me take a step back and do some thinking. There are a lot of creative people in our industry, but not all companies register as innovative. At the same time, a lot has been written and said about Innovation by better and greater than me. In this post I try to crystallize three points, which in my mind are obstacles when transforming an organization into an innovator. Comments are welcome…

#1 – Feel the Pain

Anyone going through “Start-up 101” knows that first step in forming any solution is identifying the pain to be addressed. But that’s trivial. My point is different: pain should be felt in the organization in order to drive innovation. It’s not by chance that a lot of the most timeless, unique creations through history were done by artist in pain; either physical or mental. When an organization has its belly full, there’s no real need to innovate. In my mind, having a large group of people working on innovation, with limitless resources is no more than a group of people trying to fill their workdays. Innovation should be done in small teams, short on resources, limited on time with lots of passion. Innovation organizations need to be hungry.

Israel is considered as a place with impressive amount of innovation per capita, but many don’t understand where it comes from. Innovation might be rooted in our culture, but it’s not something we do, it necessity to survive in a hostile environment. Just throw couple of guys in a hot dessert with short supplies: if they don’t innovate they won’t walk out of there. Give us enough resources and time, and it becomes a disaster (don’t believe me? read a local newspaper) .

#2 – Independent decision making

Innovation for sake of innovation is no more than an academic exercise. The tipping point is when the organization needs to make the decision if to take an innovative idea / concept / product into the mainstream. That decision point is somewhat of a dichotomy, executives have a lot on their minds: tons of emails to handle, board members who hassle them, fires to put down, annual objectives to met and what have you. Now go convince them your innovative idea is the next big thing. Good luck. It’s nearly inhuman to ask bandwidth to make a decision on something new under those conditions. Three ways around this, if you’re in an organization lead by an inhuman person – you’re lucky. But just before you move to the next point, might want think if you’d like to work for an organization run by an inhuman person..that normally backfires in other alleys.

Some organizations make innovation their core business and by-pass this, well actually only one organization really does that, but he’s now on a medical leave.

So for the rest of us, we need to get to a point where the organization let us make independent decisions that does not need to go through all the approval processes. When that happens though, and you’re out there independent (and hungry) its now up to you – nobody to roll your faults on – just make sure to get an extra pack of big balls.

#3 – Failure is not an option, but it will always happen

When you go through all that, and you’re sure your innovative product that finally got a chance, is going to be the next big thing, keep in mind that you’re likely to fail. Statistics. That’s the point to put on that extra pack from the previous point. However, the possibility to fail should not deter you; just keep you sharp and focused. Never be afraid of failure, and most important, once you fail – don’t be afraid to push with same vigor on the next idea. Why? Because eventually, you will be successful: Statistics.

Best,

Amichay