As I wrote in Part 1, I learned several valuable lessons about how to make requests when tapping into the wisdom of the crowd. These lessons aren’t unique to asking for input, though, the especially relevant for people working in and on innovation
But I didn’t start this journey to learn something, I started it to get out of writing an article (ironically, it resulted in me writing two).
This is the post I meant to write.
Innovation is something different that creates value.
“Value” is the key word in that definition. Something may be different, it may even be new to the world, but if it doesn’t create value, it’s not innovation.
How does something create value? It solves a problem.
Following are some of 2019’s innovations that solved problems, created value, and changed lives, according to the people who love them*
Kwikset Kevo to eliminate the need to carry keys and the fear of losing them.
“The main reason a blue-tooth lock for my house is life-changing is that I’ve always had a problem losing my house keys. There is nothing more annoying than leaving them at the office and having to call my wife or kids to unlock the door. Not only that, but it’s just so convenient to be able to swipe my smartphone to open the door.
As a techie, it’s a dream come true and gives me the feeling of living in a
futuristic world where I can unlock my door with an app. No more searching
for that familiar jingle in my pocket, but rather just my smartphone, which
should always be there!”
iRobot Roomba i7+ to save you time by cleaning your home and cleaning itself
“The Roomba i7+ has been profoundly game-changing to the cleaning of my
home, thanks to the introduction of the Clean Base. Although other robot
vacuums now have Automatic Dirt Disposal, the Roomba i7+ was the first from iRobot that could empty its waste into a bin. This completely took the
effort out of cleaning the home for weeks at a time, unlike other robot
vacuums where you have to empty the bin frequently. As it can hold up to 30
cleans worth of dirt, you can set it to schedule cleaning daily with
self-disposal lasting for many days.”
“I would say the product that has changed my life the most is Apple’s new
waterproof iPod shuffle. I had tried waterproof mp3 players in the past but
either the audio was really bad or they would only function a few meters
underwater. So I wrote off the idea of having music in the background while
diving a long time ago.
However, this tiny light-weight iPod shuffle was life-changing since it
allows me to listen to music up to 200 ft underwater. The device uses
earbuds to deliver crystal clear sound, including good bass, which was
lacking on other underwater mp3 players that I tried.
I didn’t replace any product that I had previously owned since I’m pretty
much used to diving in complete silence for many years now, which is a
privilege in itself. I was gifted this iPod shuffle by a family member and
instantly fell in love with it. Especially when I’m diving in shallow
waters under 200ft, classical music in the background makes the experience
even more epic when scuba diving.”
Torben Lonne, Diver, Co-Founder & Chief Editor at DIVEIN.com
“My mother is diabetic and this is something she can enjoy without throwing her sugars off. For me, since diabetes is hereditary, it’s a guilt-free treat with a glass of milk in the evening for my chocolate craving and I don’t need to worry about having too much sugar.
For my mother, it replaced products made with artificial sugars or real sugar desserts/ treats that impact her blood tests. For me, I don’t need power to stop from eating any chocolate candy, but I can still indulge.”
“The invention that change my life in 2019 is Gravity, a therapeutic
weighted blanket. Before I laid my hands on this product, I used to suffer
a lot from anxiety-induced insomnia. A friend introduced me to Gravity and it looked quite ordinary at first. However, from the very first day that I used this product up until today, I’ve not had any issue of insomnia at all! Gravity indeed transformed my life.”
Disney+ for saving time and money while giving access to the box office’s biggest hits
“Even though it was released, Disney+ has completely changed our buying habits forever. My family is pretty Disney obsessed, and we spend quite a bit of money renting and buying Disney TV shows from Amazon.
My kids want the ability to stream every single Star Wars, Pixar, Disneys, or Marvel movie that comes now. Now the entire Disney catalog is available on Disney+ for only $6.99 a month. Not to mention, every film released in the future will be streaming exclusively on the service after its theatrical release. This service is saving us tons of time and money searching for these shows and movies on various streaming services. Furthermore, 40% of this year’s box returns were produced by Disney. Disney+ is essentially a subscription to the box office’s biggest movies.”
“A great product that came onto the market in 2019 was Google’s Pixel 3a phone. The reason why it was so life-changing is that I rarely upgrade my phone. When I was forced to do so this year, it happened to be Google’s first budget phone with one of the best camera’s on the market.
I’m one of those guys who would rather invest my hard-earned money than to buy the next new toy, but this phone upgrade will provide me with long-term
value which is hard to pass up. As a hobbyist photographer, it allowed me to capture beautiful images without a bulky camera.”
What are the innovations that created value for you in 2019?
What do you hope to see come to the market in 2020?
Let me know in the comments!
*Quick note: this article is not an endorsement of these products, as I’ve never used them, and the links are NOT affiliate links, they’re just there to give you quick access to more info if you want.
Writing weekly articles is not easy and, I’ll admit, sometimes I just mail it in. That was pretty much my plan for December because, as I convinced myself, “no one has time to read anything this time of year.”
I drew up a list of lists. You know the ones, the lists of this year’s top whatevers. One of the lists on my list was “Top Innovations of 2019” but, when I sat down to write it, my mind went blank.
Undeterred, I decided to tap into the wisdom of the crowd and post a request on Help A Reporter Out (HARO).
That’s when things got interesting…
Here’s what I posted:
2019’s Best Innovations
What products or services came onto the market in 2019 and changed your life? Why was this so life-changing? What, if anything, did it replace?
Only complete responses please (i.e. NO “if this is of interest to you, please call me)
Please include in your submission:
1. Answers to the 3 questions above
2. How you would like to be credited (name, title, company)
3. ONE link that should be affiliated with your post (e.g. company website, LinkedIn profile, Twitter handle)
I received 32 responses within 8 hours!
An excellent start to my plan to not write an article.
Then, I started reading through the responses.
Here’s what I learned:
There is a lot of innovation happening in the adult personal care space. From camel-toe proof athletic underwear, to all sorts of menstruation products, to personal pleasure products, there is A LOT happening below the waistline. And I don’t want to write about it. Sorry.
Posting on HARO is a great way to get free stuff. Most of the promotional pitches offered to send me their products so I could try them out. It’s a nice gesture but claiming the SWAG seemed dishonest and, especially with regards to the types of innovations mentioned above, Thank You but No.
Be very clear about all the things you don’t want when asking for input. I clearly stated that I didn’t want a bunch of cliff-hanger responses, but it never occurred to me that I would have to say no promotional pitches. And no products that I can’t walk to my parents about.
That last lesson doesn’t just apply to requesting pitches for an article, it applies to essentially every aspect of a business, especially innovation.
Innovation thrives within constraints.
When entrepreneurs start companies, they face very real constraints — not enough time and money, no easy access to the talent and capabilities they need. Yet when intrapreneurs start innovation projects, they’re told that “the sky is the limit” or “do what you think is right and we’ll support you.”
Those are lies and they waste massive amounts of time, energy, and goodwill.
Instead, corporate leaders and innovators need to be clear about everything they DO NOT want. Many of my clients have constraints around the size of business they want (businesses more than $XM in revenue), minimum profit margin, target geographies and/or populations, and even acceptable revenue models.
By establishing constraints, leaders create the environment required for innovators to be creative and successful.
Without constraints, teams may find real problems and develop great solutions but come back with something that the company will never support. Like a medical device company with an innovation team that designed an app-controlled wearable vibrator*
Amongst the many pitches, however, there were stories from people who found innovations that solved problems and created value. You can read all about them here.
*Not a real story but, as I learned from reading the pitches, a real product
“What do you plan to do on vacation?” my friend asked.
“Nothing…”
Long silence
“…And it will be amazing.”
We live in a world that confuses activity with achievement so I should not have been surprised that the idea of deliberately doing nothing stunned my friend into silence.
After all, when people say, “I wish I had nothing to do” they usually mean “I wish I could choose what I do with my time.” And, when they do have the opportunity to choose, very few choose to do nothing.
Why does the idea of doing nothing make us so uncomfortable?
“driven by the perceptions that a busy person possesses desired human capital characteristics (competence, ambition) and is scarce and in demand on the job market.”
We didn’t always believe this.
For most of human history, we’ve had a pretty balanced view of the need for both work and leisure. Aristotle argued that virtue was obtainable through contemplation, not through endless activity. Most major religions call for a day of rest and reflection. Even 19th-century moral debates, as recorded by historian EO Thompson, recognized the value of hard work AND the importance of rest.
So what happened?
While it’s easy to say that we have to work more because of the demands of our jobs, the data says otherwise. In fact, according to a working paper by Jonathan Gershuny, a time-expert based on the UK, actual time spent at work has not increased since the 1960s.
The actual reason may be that we want to work more. According to economist Robert Frank, those who identify as workaholics believe that:
“building wealth…is a creative process, and the closest thing they have to fun.”
We choose to spend time working because Work — “the job itself, the psychic benefits of accumulating money, the pursuit of status, and the ability to afford the many expensive enrichments of an upper-class lifestyle” according to an article in The Atlantic — is what we find most fulfilling.
It’s not that I like working, I just don’t like wasting time.
We tend to equate doing nothing with laziness, apathy, a poor work ethic, and a host of other personality flaws and social ills. But what if that’s not true.
What if, in the process of doing nothing, we are as productive as when we do something?
Science is increasingly showing this to be the case.
Multiple fMRI studies have revealed the existence of the default mode network (DMN), a large-scale brain network that is most active when we’re day-dreaming. Researchers at the University of Southern California argue that
“downtime is, in fact, essential to mental processes that affirm our identities, develop our understanding of human behavior and instill an internal code of ethics — processes that depend on the DMN.”
The results of harnessing the power of your DMN are immense:
More creativity. The research discussed in Scientific American suggests that DMN is more active in creative people. For example, according to Psychology Today:
The most recorded song of all time, “Yesterday” by The Beatles, was ‘heard’ by Paul McCartney as he was waking up one morning. The melody was fully formed in his mind, and he went straight to the piano in his bedroom to find the chords to go with it, and later found words to fit the melody.
Mozart described how his musical ideas ‘flow best and most abundantly.’ when he was alone ‘traveling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep… Whence and how they come, I know not, nor can I force them.’
Tchaikovsky described how the idea for a composition usually came ‘suddenly and unexpectedly… It takes root with extraordinary force and rapidity, shoots up through the earth, puts forth branches and leaves, and finally blossoms.’
More productivity. According to an essay in The New York Times, “Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets. The space and quiet that idleness provides is a necessary condition for standing back from life and seeing it whole, for making unexpected connections and waiting for the wild summer lightning strikes of inspiration — it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done.”
Less burnout. Regardless of how many hours you work, consider this: researchers have found that it takes 25 minutes to recover from a phone call or an e-mail. On average, we are interrupted every 11 minutes which means that we can never catch up, we’re always behind.
That feeling of always being behind leads to burn-out which the World Health Organization officially recognized as a medical condition defined as a “syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed” and manifests with the following symptoms:
Feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion
Increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job
Reduced professional efficacy
Doing nothing, quieting our minds and not focusing on any particular task, can actually help reset our bodies systems, quieting the release of stress chemicals, slowing our heart rates, and improving our mental and physical energy
Better health. Multiple studies indicate that idleness “produces many health benefits including, but not limited to, reduced heart rate, better digestion, improvements in mood, and a boost in overall emotional well-being — which, of course, affects everything on a biochemical and physiological level, thereby serving as a major deciding factor on whether or not we fall ill, and/or remain ill. Mental downtime also replenishes glucose and oxygen levels in the brain, and allows our brains to process and file things, which leaves us feeling more rested and clear-headed, promotes a stronger sense of self-confidence, and…more willing to we trust change.”
Fine, you convinced me. How can I do nothing?
There are the usual suspects — vacations, meditation, and physical exercise — but, if you’re anything like me, the thought of even finding 5 minutes to listen to a meditation app is so overwhelming that I never even start.
An easier place to start, in my experience, is in intentionally working nothing into the moments that are already “free.” Here are three of my favorite ways to work a bit of nothing into my day.
Make the Snooze button work for you. When my alarm goes off, I instinctively hit the Snooze button because, I claim, it is my first and possibly only victory of the day. It’s also a great way to get 9 minutes of thoughtful quiet nothingness in which I can take a few deep breaths, scan my body for any aches and pains, and make sure that I’m calm and my mind is quiet when I get out of bed.
Stare out the window. I always place my computer next to a window so that I can stare out the window for a few minutes throughout the day and people think I’m thinking deep thoughts. Which I am. Subconsciously. Lest anyone accuse me of being lazy or unproductive while I watch the clouds roll by, I simply point them to research that shows “that individuals who took five to ten minute breaks from work to do nothing a few times a day displayed an approximately 50% increase in their ability to think clearly and creatively, thus rendering their work far more productive.
Bring the beach to you. Research from a variety of places, from the UK Census to The Journal of Coastal Zone Management, indicate that our brains and bodies benefit from time at the beach. But, if you can’t go to the beach, there are lots of ways to bring the beach to you. Perhaps the simplest is to bring more blue into your environment. Most people associate blue with feelings of calm and peace and a study published in the American Association for the Advancement of Science found that the color blue can boost creativity. Even putting a picture of a beach (or your own personal happy place) on your desk or computer screen can trigger your brain to slow down, relax, and possibly trigger your DMN.
With so many benefits, isn’t it time you started doing more nothing?
Part 1 was all about the experience of working in Corporate Innovation so, naturally, Part 2 has to be about one of the biggest areas where time in a said career is spent: meetings.
After nearly pulling/spraining/breaking an ankle/wrist/elbow/shoulder/knee trying to navigate “The Fact of the Matter” (aka experiencing a career in innovation), I looked forward to the safety of the next installation.
Instead I walked into “The Differential Room”, aka every meeting a corporate innovator has to endure captured in a series of chalkboards.
The first team meeting
“Point Point Line” (2015) from “The Differential Room” (2018) by William Forsythe
Kinda weird, kinda fun.
Just like your first meeting as a member of the Innovation team.
This is the moment when you realize you’re in a very different world. Instead of working on things that exist, that can be touched or experienced, that are known and explainable, you are now in an abstract and intangible world that is relying on you to define it, make it tangible, and explain it.
You’ve been given tools (fingers that make “points”) like customer research, access to people in the company, maybe even a bit of money and you’re expected to connect them together to something (a line). It’s up to you what form it takes, whether it is a product, a service, a process (e.g. how long the line is, whether it’s vertical or horizontal or diagonal).
You find that it’s rather fun to play around with options, to imagine what’s possible and, eventually, you actually begin to see what you’re creating.
People walk by and give you strange looks. Some stop to ask what you’re doing. You respond, “I’d make a business (line)! See! Isn’t it cool?” And they back away slowly, shake their heads, and return to their business.
Meeting with the Innovation Team Leader
It’s been fun designing the business (line) but you can’t stay there forever. It’s time to move on, to go deeper into the process.
It’s time to meet with your boss.
“Standing on One Leg (1st Act)” (2018) from “The Differential Room” (2018) by William Forsythe
You know you have to be a bit more buttoned up and that you have to show her the option that you think is best (not all the lines you made, and tested, and discarded). So you prepare a presentation, excited to talk about lines
Yes, the meeting feels a bit like a performance, but that’s what meetings are. You’re surprised that, after presenting your business, your boss tells you that in addition to working on your business (line), you need to talk to this person in finance (stand on one leg), that person in legal (raise the heel of the standing foot), and these 3 people in supply chain (hop) AND do this all on the same deadline with no extra funding (not expressing exhaustion) BUT don’t let anyone know what you’re doing because that will slow you down (not…drawing any attention to yourself).
The Innovation Council Meeting
You’re now exhausted from hopping but you’ve successfully concealed that exhaustion and you can still make a line so it’s time to move deeper into the process and move one more rung up the ladder.
You and your boss prepare another presentation and you go to meet the Innovation Council — 5 people all one-level up from your boss and not involved in the team’s day to day work but definitely interested, somewhat supportive, and with budget to keep funding the work.
“Starting at Any Corner” (2018) from “The Differential Room” (2018) by William Forsythe
More of a performance than the last meeting but, again, to be expected.
For some reason, they think your business (line) should be an app-based service (bench) that bolsters the revenue of an existing business instead of being a new source of revenue. They ask you to prototype the app (walk around the bench), share the prototype with the existing business team (walk alternately backwards and forwards), revise the prototype based on the existing business team’s feedback (complete turn alternately left or right), and model out a 5 year NPV (alternately accelerating or decelerating).
You should have known there would be numbers involved.
The C-Suite Meeting
It took you several attempts to complete the wishes of the innovation council and took much longer than you thought. Your business idea (line) is a distant memory, you now have an app-based service (bench) that seems far more complicated than it needs to be but makes the existing business team happy, and a financial model that, if you’re honest, has great numbers because you used Goal Seek.
Time to move on, right to the end of the installation and the top of the organization!
“Without the Use of the Arms” (2018) from “The Differential Room” (2018) by William Forsythe
Before you could even start your presentation (performance), the questions and feedback started coming at you.
Some of the requests were understandable (lie flat on your back for thirteen counts, sit upright in thirteen counts) but then they slashed your budget (without the use of arms) while still expecting you to do what they asked.
Then they asked if you could launch in 2 months instead of 12 months (increase the angle of the leg to torso to one hundred eighty degrees) and get to $500M revenue in 12 months (keeping the elbows by the ribs, move the hands under the shoulders counting aloud to thirteen).
At some point you stopped listening because it all sounded like nonsense. What they were asking for was impossible.
You went in with an app-based service (bench) that everyone liked and looked good on paper and now you have…..what?
And BTW, the customer research (points) say that people want the business you designed 9 months ago (line)!
The “Planning for Next Year” Meeting
You’ve given up trying to understand, let alone act on, the last meeting. But you are no quitter. You carry on to the next installation. To the next meeting, the one in which the team is planning for next year, requesting the resources it will need to move faster and build bigger businesses.
“Towards the Diagnostic Gaze” (2013) by William Forsythe
“Looks like next year is going to be a down year for the company so they really need us to step up, do more, and generate at least $100M revenue. That said, they also have to cut our budget 75% and our team size in half.”
FML
In Summary…
To be fair, not all companies are like this. But, to be honest, I’ve had 6 conversations THIS WEEK that were some variation of this. Conversations with clients in VERY different industries and at VERY different companies that all said almost the same thing:
It is really really hard to do something new or different in a big company. It’s also really important to try but I am frustrated and exhausted and I’m starting to wonder it’s worth it. Or if it’s even possible.
I know that it pains them to say that. It pains me to hear it.
Making innovation happen in large organizations is about more than putting in place processes, structures, and KPIs (all necessary, but not sufficient, for success).
It’s about leaders learning how to think, act, and react in ways that are different from what is usually required when managing the existing business.
It requires a level of optimism, resilience, and belief in purpose that can be difficult for people to sustain in the face of ever more constrained resources, shorter timelines, and waning organizational patience.
So, when our belief wavers we do the only things we can: we share our experiences with others in similar situations, laugh about the nonsense, and take a deep breath or a small rest before we continue.
After all, the next room was filled with eighty hanging swinging pendulums that we have to dodge to continue through the exhibit.
Have you ever had that eery feeling of some secret you’ve been keeping being subtly exposed by someone or something that has absolutely no way of knowing it? Have you ever had a conversation with someone, or read something, or seen something, and thought to yourself, “How do they know?”
I had that feeling a few months ago at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in Boston.
And it made me laugh. Mostly so I wouldn’t cry.
A Bit of Background
The exhibit William Forsythe: Choreographic Objects is “the first comprehensive American exhibition of performative objects, video installations, and interactive sculptures of the internationally celebrated choreographer William Forsythe.”
For the uninitiated (me), William Forsythe is a famous choreographer who “redefine(d) classical ballet” through his unique approach to “choreography, staging, lighting, and dance analysis.” Since the early 1990s, he’s also been developing art installations that are designed to “stimulate movement from visitors.”
This all sounds well and good and like a fun exhibit, and I needed to find something to do with my dad while he was in town, so off we went!
Welcome to the Jungle
William Forsythe, The Fact of The Matter, 2009
The second piece in the exhibit is Forsythe’s The Fact of the Matter — essentially a large room with hundreds of rings suspended from the ceiling by straps of various lengths, and accompanied by instructions to move from one end to the other using only the rings. This is the piece’s first showing in the US for (obvious) liability reasons.
Dad and I, overly confident in our physical fitness, decided that it would be a good idea to give it a try, and joined the line that circled the room (only 10 people were allowed on the piece at a time).
That’s when the feeling that I have experienced this before started to creep in.
45 minutes later, having made it only one-third of the way through the installation and narrowly avoiding breaking or spraining or pulling something on at least eight different occasions, I stepped out and collapsed against the wall.
After an embarrassing amount of recovery time, I walked to the next installation and realized why the whole experience felt so familiar.
It was the perfect encapsulation of a career in corporate innovation.
The Corporate Innovator’s experience in 45 minutes
The initial rush of excitement because “Yea! We’re going to do something fun and new!”
The gradual acceptance that you’re going to have to wait to get started because there are rules and we need to be safe and not take any risks
The eager learning as you patiently wait, watch others give it a try, and search the internet for tips on how to succeed
The rising confidence that, by watching and studying, you have learned enough to do better than the people currently trying
The helpful arrogance you display as you shout advice and guidance to people doing the work
The rush of adrenaline you feel when it is finally your turn
The certainty and strength you feel as you start, grabbing a ring in each hand and pulling yourself off the ground
The terror of placing your foot in the first ring and feeling it shoot out in a direction that it definitely should not go and realizing that this is SO MUCH HARDER than you thought it would be
The quiet resilience that takes root as you get your first foot back under control, your second foot in its ring, and realize that you can’t bail now because you haven’t gotten anywhere and all the people you gave advice to are standing along a different wall watching you (and probably feeling quite smug, if we’re going to be honest)
The sense of doom when you realize that, now that you have all your limbs under control, you need to move a foot out of its current ring and into another one
Repeat steps 8 through 10 until you are so physically and emotionally exhausted that you wonder what you were ever thinking, that you now have pain in muscles you didn’t even know you had, and that you’re definitely having wine with dinner tonight.
The relief of returning to solid ground and feeling supported as you lean against a wall, then watching all those young whipper-snappers who shouted advice at you and who are now hanging on to rings and straps for dear life
The hard soul-searching as you choose whether or not to do it all over again
What Forsythe (apparently) knows about corporate innovation that most don’t
You don’t know anything until you do something: I saw lots of ways to get from one end to the other and thought I had a brilliant plan. But the only thing I knew for sure after I grasped the first ring was that I needed to stay as close to the ground as possible.
Doing something is much harder than watching someone else do it: No matter how much you study or observe others, no matter how “good” your advice may seem, no matter how much experience you have in something like this (I spent my childhood playing on a jungle gym!), doing something is always, always harder than watching and critiquing others.
There is no one “best” way, just the way that works for you: I spent 30 minutes watching people move from ring to ring. Some people (mostly kids) went fast and made it look effortless, some people took a more measured approach, and some (mostly older folks) kept their feet on the ground and only moved their hands from ring to ring. Everyone approached the task differently, taking into account their abilities and working to achieve their own definitions of success.
The hardest part is moving forward: Every time I stabilized myself, I felt a warm rush of relief. “I’ve got this,” I would think to myself. And then I would realize that I had a choice — I could stand still and be safe OR I could move my foot to another ring, fundamentally de-stabilizing myself and sending limbs flying everywhere, but also getting closer to my goal.
You only fail when you start blaming: Yes, I bailed well short of my goal. I didn’t have the upper body strength to keep going. But did I fail? Nope. I learned that I need to work harder to strengthen my arms, shoulders, and core. Did other people bail before they got to the end? Yep. Did some of them fail? Yes they did. They blamed the exhibit (“of course I couldn’t make it to the end, it was designed by a professional choreographer, only professional dancers can do it”), they blamed things they couldn’t control (“I’m too old for this”), and they blamed other people (“that kid was always in my way!”). They didn’t celebrate their courage to start or recognize what they learned. They just moved on from that “stupid installation” that will never work.
The next room
Just when I thought Forsythe might have just gotten lucky with his “Experience a Career in Corporate Innovation” installation, I walked into the next room. Filled with chalkboards, he had somehow captured the progression of meetings corporate innovators endure as they present to ever higher levels of management…
My name is Robyn and I am a recovering Innovation Snob.
I didn’t realize I was an Innovation Snob until a few days ago when I read the following in CB Insights’ report State of Innovation: Survey of 677 Corporate Strategy Executives, “Despite deep fear and talk of disruption, companies invest in the small stuff… 78% of innovation portfolios are allocated to continuous innovation instead of disruptive risks.”
“That’s exactly what they should be doing,” I thought to myself. “After all, the Golden Ratio often preached when discussing innovation portfolios is that 70% should be allocated to Incremental or Sustaining innovations, 20% to Adjacent innovations, and 10% to Disruptive or Breakthrough Innovations.”
That’s when it hit me:
When talking about “Incremental Innovation,” we actually mean “Incremental Improvement.”
Because we mean “Improvement” (even when we say “Innovation”), we don’t value Incremental Innovation in the same way that we value the innovations that introduce truly new things (products, services, technologies, business models) to the world and dismissing it as “less than” those “higher forms” of innovation.
Dismissing Incremental Innovation as “less important/valuable than” other types of innovation is not only snobbish and hypocritical, it is incredibly ignorant. Incremental Innovation is exactly this type of innovation that a company must do in order to stay competitive today AND fund the Adjacent and Breakthrough innovations that will define it’s future.
I am 100% guilty of telling people that Incremental Innovation is important and then rolling my eyes when someone pitches an incremental improvement as innovation
I hate it when I get all self-righteous and judgey about someone or something only to realize that I am just as guilty.
Ooops, my bad
How did we get here?
There’s probably lots of reasons for this gap between what we say (“Incremental Innovation is an essential component of any innovation portfolio”) and what we do (“Incremental innovation isn’t real innovation”) but these are probably the 3 biggest drivers:
Incremental Innovation will not make you famous. No company has ever landed on Fast Company’s “Most Innovative” list because they launched better/faster/cheaper/easier to use versions of their existing products. No one has ever been invited to speak at TED because they made a slight improvement to someone else’s idea.
Incremental Innovation will not make you rich. Entrepreneurs with dreams of starting a unicorn company (and realizing the massive payout that comes with it) don’t look for things they can improve, they look for things they can “disrupt.” Companies know that Incremental Innovation is better suited to helping them maintain their place in their industry, not catapult ahead to the top of the heap. Consultants know that no company will hire them to help with Incremental Innovation, so they publish and preach and sell the promise of cheap and risk-free breakthroughs.
We are so desperate to be seen as Innovative that we’re afraid to be honest. Words matter and, even though it’s a buzz-word, companies love the word “innovation.” Their annual reports and quarterly calls are filled with it, employees are measured on it, valuation premiums are calculated using it. As a result, we know that we are more likely to get budget, people, support, recognitions, raises, and promotions if we say we’re working on “Innovation” even though, in our heart of hearts, we know it’s an improvement.
Where do we go from here?
Captain of the “Incremental is Innovation, Too!” campaign
We have 3 options:
Keep calling incremental changes “innovation
Stop calling incremental changes “innovation” and start calling them “improvements”
Start using more specific language to describe innovation instead of just using “innovation” as a one-size-fits-whatever-I-want-it-to term
Personally, I’m in favor of #3 because it recognizes that doing something new or different is innovation and therefore difficult and forces organizations to be more disciplined in how they make decisions, especially ones related to resources allocation.
For those wanting to pursue option #3, there are lots of ways to go about it and I’ll cover many of them in an upcoming post. But the easiest way to start is by asking three simple questions:
Does what we’re doing improve something that already exists (e.g. make it easier to use, cheaper, more accessible)?
Does what we’re doing change the way we go to market (e.g. from selling through a retailer to going DTC) or make money (e.g. selling subscriptions instead of having the consumer pay for an item when they buy it) or who we’re targeting (e.g. from targeting women to targeting children)?
Does what we’re doing change how we go to market and how we make money and who we target/compete against?
If you answered Yes to #1, you’re doing Incremental Innovation. Yes to #2 is Adjacent. Yes to #3 is Breakthrough.
All 3 are essential components of a health Innovation Portfolio. Each requires different people and processes to make them work. Each deserves recognition and respect from peers, leaders, press, stockholders, and the general public.
Let’s be honest, I’m not sure that I’ll ever be as excited for Incremental Innovation as I am for Breakthrough innovation. I can’t imagine ooohhh-ing and ahhhh-ing over it the way that I do with breakthroughs. But I need to respect, value, and celebrate it, and the people who do it, as much as I respect, value and celebrate other types of innovations and the teams that work on them.
My name is Robyn and I am a RECOVERING innovation snob.
