Before going on to Part 2 of Innovation Wars, I thought I’d take a moment to point out a sure fire way to spot someone trying to sell you innovation snake oil. Watch for this phrase:
Innovation is turning ideas into market benefit.
(Innosanity’s happy-fluffy innovation definition #1)
Hogwash.
First of all, if you are paradigm shifting, you are trail blazing. You are making a lot of mistakes. You are even repeating some of those mistakes. To an operations person, you look like a blindfolded drunkard. You have no way of knowing if you will produce anything of value.
Not only might you be doing things wrong, you might also be doing wrong. You may be destroying value, disrupting a business model or a way of life with no clear value resulting for anyone, even those who hoped to benefit. It’s not very nice, but it is innovation.
At the feast of innovation, Superman and Lex Luthor both get a seat at the table.
Why is this important? Because part of curing innosanity is getting real about the benefits and the liabilities of the practice. Improvement is always about trying to make something better, but innovation is about doing something different, and different isn’t always better.
The next posts are about how to manage innovators when it’s hard to tell whether they are about to save the world or send it hurtling into the sun.