“I don’t know how I got into the program. I’m not innovative.”
For nearly two years, I’ve been the Dean of the Intrapreneurship Academy, a program I created in partnership with The Cable Center to help the industry’s rising stars learn how to be more effective innovators. Over the course of four cohorts, we’ve taught nearly 100 people from all over the world (US, India, Honduras, Panama, Columbia…just to name a few) the tools and mindsets of successful intrapreneurs and supported them as they did the hard work of making innovation happen in their companies.
And in every single cohort, a significant number of people pull me aside and say, “I don’t know how I got into the program. I’m not innovative.”
To which I respond, “The fact that you don’t think you are an innovator but someone in your company does means that you are.”
Why is this? Why do so many people have a misperception about whether or not they’re innovative? Why do people see others as innovative even if they don’t see themselves that way? While we’re on the subject, what makes someone an “innovator” to begin with?
What is an Innovator?
According to Dictionary.com an Innovator is “a person who introduces new methods, ideas, or products.”
That’s a perfectly good definition but it also means that when my husband says, “I have an idea, let’s install new lighting in my home office,” that he is an innovator and I’m just not willing to concede that (plus he usually chooses to sit in the dark so I’m not sure why he needs new lighting).
A better definition is rooted in my preferred definition of “innovation” and would be something like, “A person who does something new or different that creates value.” The last two words in that definition are critical because they differentiate invention (something new or different) from innovation (something new and different that create value) and therefore inventors from innovators. And, since I’m not convinced that new lighting will create value, gets me out of having to agree with my husband’s claim that his idea was innovative.
How NOT to spot an Innovator
Before we get into how to spot an innovator, I think it’s important to dispel a few myths that often lead to people being misidentified as innovators.
They have a “look.” For a period of time in the early aughts, if you wore a black turtleneck you were likely to be labeled an “innovator” and, as a result, have everyone stare at you with eager anticipation of your next brilliant world-changing idea. Then the magic uniform became a hoodie and flip-flops, or thick-black rimmed hipster glasses ideally paired with a flannel shirt and ankle-length jeans. Hate to break it to you but, unless you live in the Marvel Universe, clothes do not imbue in their wearers with special super-powers, so don’t assume that someone is innovative just because they’re wearing the outfit du jour.
They use innovation words all the time. Just because you can say a word doesn’t mean you know what it means, let alone that you can act on it. I can say “Python” and “Pandas” and “Numpy” (pronounced num-pie) and maybe even use those words in a sentence but I can’t define them for you and I sure as heck can write a program in Python or explain how and why pandas and numpies would be useful in such a program (my husband can, it’s what he does in his home office with the supposedly poor lighting). So if someone is always using terms like “disrupt” or “business model” or “lean start-up” or “design thinking,” ask them to define those terms AND explain how to put them in practice. If they can’t accurately do that, they’re not true innovators.
They tell you that they’re innovative. One of my favorite quotes is by Margaret Thatcher who said, “Being in power is like being a lady…if you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.” The same thing is true for Innovators. If someone goes around telling people that they’re an innovator or that they’re an “ideas person,” you can be confident that they are not.
How to Spot an Innovator
Now that we know how to spot pretenders, here’s how to spot the real thing:
They ask questions AND they listen to the answers. Lots of people ask questions but Innovators ask questions rooted in curiosity and a selfless desire to make things better. They say things like, “Why are we doing it this way?” and “What if we tried it that way?” and “I know we’ve always done it this way but what if…?” When you give them an answer, they listen and incorporate the new information into their thinking and their ideas.
They’re not afraid to try doing things differently. Maintaining the status quo is safe and no one ever got fired for following the rules. But playing safe and following the rules doesn’t move us forward, it keeps us where we are (and maybe even causes us to fall behind). But doing something different involves taking a risk and that can be scary. Innovators are willing to take on that risk because helping others by improving or creating things is more important to them than their own comfort.
They’re more interested in Doing than Talking. Let’s be honest, it’s fun to talk about innovation. It’s energizing to be part of a brainstorming session with brightly colored sticky notes flying around. It’s exciting to get together a small team to come up with an idea and pitch that idea to a Shark Tank. It’s fun to go on field trips to incubators and accelerators. But innovators don’t stop there, they don’t view those activities as signs of innovation success. They push to prototype and test the best idea from the brainstorming session, they demand dedicated funding and resources to bring their Shark Tank winning idea to life, and they do the hard slow work of applying their field trip lessons to foster a culture of innovation within the organization.
The innovators I teach and work with do all of the 3 things listed above and doing those things come so naturally to them that they don’t realize how uncommon, difficult, and important doing these things is. And yes, some of them also wear black turtlenecks or hoodies or hipster glasses (or all three at the same time!) but they don’t do wear these things because they’re innovators. They wear these things because they’re comfortable. And comfort is of the utmost importance when you’re doing the hard work of innovation.
Nothing drives my husband more insane than when the “80/20 Rule” is invoked. Whenever we’re doing something and I wave my hand and say “Eh, it’s good enough,” I watch, mildly amused, as he takes a deep breath, tenses his shoulders, and tries his very very best to find a way to explain to me that it is either right or wrong and that there is no such thing as “good enough.”
The look on my husband’s face when I say “it’s good enough”
When you consider that he spent 6 years as an officer in the US Navy’s nuclear submarine fleet, learning how to run nuclear reactors, and occasionally sleeping on missiles because they offered more room than his bunk, it’s easy to understand why he approaches the world with an All-of-Nothing mindset.
But most of us don’t live in a metal tube, deep under the ocean, side-by-side with nuclear warheads, knowing that the smallest spark could result in a long, agonizing death from suffocation, starvation, or melting (seriously, he has a story of nearly melting to death. It’s one of my favorites).
So why do we act like it when it comes to innovation?
Don’t believe me?
Every innovator working within a big company has had at least one moment in which they have very promising news — fantastic customer feedback on a new concept, promising early revenue from a small in-market test, genuine interest from a potential partner or acquisition — and it’s time to go to the powers that be and ask for more money and/or people.
They enter the meeting, bursting with optimism because they’ve always been told by the bosses that “We know innovation is more risky than our current business” and “we know we need to fund experiments because that’s how you de-risk innovations” and “we’ll find the money when we need it.”
They sit down, present the great news, share the data, outline the next steps, and make the Ask for the money that they were promised would be found the moment it was needed.
The look on your boss’ face when you ask for more money or people for an innovation project
The bosses are silent. Squirming uncomfortably in their seats, they start talking about the current business. Maybe it’s not doing so well so they need to funnel all the extra resources to it. Or maybe it’s doing great and they want to allocate all the extra resources to capitalize on the momentum. Or maybe it’s going exactly as expected but you never know what could happen so we need to hold on to the extra resources, just in case. And, by the way, you’re scrappy innovators, so see what you can do with what you’ve got.
This is when innovation runs into the Winner-Take-All Effect and, more often than not, it’s not the winner.
In this fascinating Medium article, James Clear asserts that,
“Not everything in life is a Winner-Take-All competition, but nearly every area of life is at least partially affected by limited resources. Any decision that involves using a limited resource like time or money will naturally result in a winner-take-all situation.”
All businesses face the challenge of limited resources. In fact, one could argue that business strategy is fundamentally about resource allocation decisions and that businesses succeed because they allocate resources better than their competitors.
The issue here is not that resources are limited and that they are, more often than not, allocated to existing business operations. The issue is that often they are ALL allocated to existing business operations.
Situations in which small differences in performance lead to outsized rewards are known as Winner-Take-All Effects.
Admittedly, the differences between innovation and core business projects are greater than the 1/100th of a second Olympic medal example Clear gives in his article. But given the context of a world that is transforming ever faster and in more unexpected ways, businesses can scarcely afford to commit all their resources to their existing businesses and treat the creation of new businesses as if it were fun little hobby.
There are countless reasons why this Effect seems to have taken hold — the need to deliver short-term quarterly results even at the expense of long-term investments, performance incentives that encourage people to adhere to the status quo, the ever-present demand to do more with less so the company can show higher profits. What’s important is not tracing the root causes. What’s important is figuring out how to overcome the root causes and shift towards a Results-Get-Rewards model.
This is probably the hardest part of working in innovation. Yes, there is a lot of advice (create a growth strategy, quantify the business results required from innovation, invest like a VC), many frameworks (70/20/10 ratio of innovation investment), and tons of tools and most of them are incredibly useful and very on-point. They are also not sufficient to escape the Winner-Take-All Effect.
The reason is that, ultimately, these frameworks and tools are applied by humans who are juggling more demands, decisions, and pressures than are accounted for in the frameworks and tools. Most business leaders have to juggle the tangible demands of sustaining the current business with the felt need to create new businesses. If they succeed at the former but fail at the latter, they will likely still be rewarded with performance bonuses and maybe even promotion. But if they succeed at the latter and miss on the former, they’ll be questioned, put on probation, and maybe even fired.
Your job, as someone trying to make innovation happen, is to help your boss to move past his or her risk aversion by addressing the risks (real or perceived) to the business AND to your boss individually.
In addition to pitching all of your great learnings (increased confidence from tests, and early revenue) you also need to tell your boss what’s in it for him or her. Perhaps the CEO has just announced a key strategic priority and this project is an example of how your boss/team/business unit is on the cutting edge (and can get your boss some face-time with the CEO). Perhaps someone was recently promoted because they “exemplify our company’s values of innovation and initiative” and this project positions your boss in a similar way.
To be clear, this is NOT manipulation and you should NOT say anything that is untrue. This is simply knowing your customer (your boss), knowing their important and unmet needs (build the business, feel secure in my job), and pitching a solution that addresses functional, social, and emotional needs.
Admittedly, this doesn’t work all the time but it works more often than you might think. They key is to be thoughtful, honest, and truly committed to advancing your innovation project AND the people working on it (your team) AND the people investing in it (your boss).
How your boss will look when you help him or her invest in building the existing business and creating the net new business
It’s Monday morning, you’re settling into your office. As you sip your coffee and start scanning your email for the newest crisis, you hear a knock on the door. Turning, you see your boss standing there…
“Good morning! Wanted to talk to you about an exciting opportunity. As you know, our CEO wants us to be more innovative. The Executive Committee met last week and we decided you would be the perfect person to lead our new innovation team. We want you to really own this so let us know what you need to make things happen. Any questions?”
If you are like the hundreds of people I’ve worked with over the past 15 years who have found themselves in this situation (or something similar), you’re so surprised that your mind has gone blank.
Fear not! Here are the 4 things you need to know to get off to a strong start:
Question 1: Why now?
Yes, the CEO thinks the company needs to be more innovative, but what happened to spur the company to action? Did a new competitor enter the market? Is your company’s revenue declining? Did the CEO read a book that says innovation is important?
Getting to the “why” behind the request is critical because it gives you insight into how serious the commitment to innovation is. If your business results are suffering, competitors are taking share, or shareholders are demanding better results, odds are there is real commitment to doing something.
If the answer is that your CEO just read the latest books or article on the importance of innovation, then just smile and nod. Odds are, this is the executive whim of the month and will pass soon.
Question 2: What do we expect as a result of our new focus on innovation?
You never start a journey without a destination in mind (even if that destination shifts as you travel) so find out now what you are expected to deliver and when. Do you need to solicit a bunch of ideas from across the company in the next quarter? Launch a new product in the next year? Generate $13B in new revenues in the next 7 years (true story of an actual answer to this question)?
Whatever the answer is, don’t panic. You have time to figure out how to achieve it if it’s possible or propose an alternative if it’s not.
And, if your boss doesn’t have an answer find out who might and schedule meetings with them to ask this question
Question 3: What type of innovation do we want?
Google “types of innovation” and you’ll get 1.86M results in 0.53 seconds. To be fair, there are lots of very useful ways to classify innovation, especially as you start building a portfolio. But you’re not there yet.
Right now, you need to know what “innovation” means to the people asking for it. Does the company make products and it wants more innovative products OR does it want you to create services? Does the company sell to businesses and want to expand the types of businesses it sells to OR sell direct to consumers?
Understanding what “innovation” looks like will give you important insights into the challenge you’re facing and the resources and support you’ll need to be successful
Question 4: What resources are we dedicating to this?
I guarantee that when you ask this question, this will be the response, “Great question. Let us know what you need.”
DO NOT accept this!
Everyone has a limit to how much they’re willing to dedicate to innovation efforts, especially at the start. You need to find those limits now. The best way to do that is to give options:
“Great, is it fair to assume that I should dedicate 100% of my time to this? If so, who should I transfer my current workload to?” (you’ll most likely be told that No, you should not dedicate 100% of your time). “Ok, how many days per week should I spend on this”
“From what I’ve read, successful innovation efforts require fully dedicated teams. Is it fair to assume that, once we have a plan, we’ll dedicate 2–3 people to this full-time?”
“Of course we’ll need money to make things happen. How much is being set aside for this? Since we usually spend $X on new R&D projects, I assume we’ll allocate at least 10% of X on innovation projects.”
Trust me, if you get answers, they won’t feel like good ones and you will make people uncomfortable. But you need to ask these questions now so people realize that innovation is not about creating something out of nothing (you’re an innovator, not a magician) it’s a serious business investment that requires resources just like all the other investments the company makes.
Congratulations!
You’re at the start of an incredible, crazy, terrifying, thrilling, maddening, exhilarating, mind-altering, life-changing journey as your company’s new head of innovation! With the answers to these 4 questions, you’re set-up for success and ready to take the next step — Finding Your Innovation Focus
