Innovation Time

I'm writing today about what is becoming the most critical innovation barrier.  For years we've talked about risk, uncertainty, culture and other factors that block innovation.  Increasingly, the biggest barrier is time.  Time is an innovation barrier on several levels.  William Penn wrote that time is what we want most, but use worst.  Couldn't open with a better quote.

The first is management time, especially available time to get involved and engaged.  Every executive wants innovation in his or her company, yet they often seem to assume it will happen magically, with no involvement or investment from the executive team.  Nothing can be further from the reality.  Where an executive spends his or her time sends signals to the rest of the organization.  In a meeting with a client recently, an executive was expounding on the importance of innovation, yet balked at spending a day assessing his organization's existing strengths and weaknesses.  He felt he could not afford the time to focus on innovation, yet expected the organization to set aside time to shift capabilities and priorities.  What executives do, and where they spend their time, tells the rest of the organization what is important.  An executive's most valuable asset is his or her time.  Where and when they spend that time indicates what's important and valuable to them.  Does your executive team spend time on innovation?  And here I mean championing it, getting engaged with the activities, encouraging innovation in the company, not simply demanding results and reviewing metrics.

The second time factor is short term.  Businesses today are captivated by quarterly results, and activities or investments that don't help achieve the quarter are candidates for defunding or simply eliminated.  If a person or an activity doesn't contribute to making the quarter, either by cutting costs or bringing in new, immediate revenue, many executives can't fathom why they'd bother.  We've built highly efficient organizations structured by rewards which accrue based on quarterly results.  There's no time like the present now has an ominous ring, since there doesn't seem to be time to think about the future or lay the foundations for future products and services.

The third time factor is thinking versus doing.  Today we value action, doing, perpetual motion, yet good innovation is contemplative, based on discovery of what we don't know.  Innovation makes mistakes, creates new learning that may not be immediately applied.  Too often good innovation looks like research, thinking, contemplation, and fails the activity tests.  How much time should your organization spend thinking up new things, versus doing stuff more efficiently?  What does the culture reflect and reinforce?  Golda Meir said it best:  I must govern the clock, not be governed by it.

The fourth factor is development and commercialization time.  While everything else in a business is speeding up, many firms seem to be adding time to product development and commercialization.  It seems to take longer and longer to get products to market, so two things happen.  First, since it takes so long to get to market it has to deliver value quickly.  Therefore it must be easy to acquire, easy to understand and easy to adopt.  That means that products that move through the development funnel are more likely to be incremental, with lower risks, but lower upsides.  Second, the product development funnel is clogged with unnecessary and undifferentiated products, but few firms take the time to re-evaluate their portfolios and prune projects and products.  Once established, many products continue well past their expiry date and simply take up development and sustenance resources that could be applied elsewhere.

If time is money, then where are you placing your time bets?  Most organizations focus an inordinate amount of time and energy on short term activities, which severely limits innovation possibilities.  Further, since executives won't commit time or get engaged, the organization places a low priority on innovation, giving it less time and focus.  And when product cycle times increase, there's less time for developing interesting new products and services. 

Look at where your organization spends its value time.  Are all of the activities and commitments as important and as valuable as the time you could spend innovating, establishing new revenue opportunities and new differentiation for your company?  Culture, risk and uncertainty are still significant innovation barriers, but time is rapidly becoming the most important barrier.  As the saying goes, time waits for no man.  Innovation doesn't either.  If you don't have time for innovation, someone else will capitalize on the good idea, and it will represent another missed opportunity for you.

Advancing Innovation and Quality

I'm happy to let you know I've been selected as an "influential" voice - by the American Society for Quality (ASQ).  The folks at the ASQ assure me they understand that I'm focused on innovation rather than an expert on quality, and are even ok with the fact that sometimes quality and innovation don't see eye to eye.  My goal is to write occasionally about quality from an innovation point of view.

I'm responding today to the recent post by Paul Borawski, the president of the ASQ.  In his June post he asks two questions about quality.  The first is:  what's the big challenge facing quality?  The second he asks is:  what questions do we need to answer in order to advance quality in the world?

 Innovation and Quality:  frenemies

As a person who works in the innovation space, I have both great regard for quality initiatives and sometimes great fear of an overbearing focus on quality.  Creating consistent, valuable products and services that have exceptional quality is very important to consumers and drives increased profit margins, but sometimes comes at the expense of creativity, innovation, variability and risk.  Quality is an outcome and becomes a cultural phenomenon, but shouldn't become a barrier to innovation. When a heightened focus on quality creates barriers for new ways of thinking or constrains innovation

Challenges

Paul asked:  what are the big challenges facing quality, and on his blog he referenced research into some of the big challenges.  As I read the research I see four major categories of challenges:

1. Governance and Management engagement
2. Quality Measures
3. Company support for quality, especially competencies and training
4. Corporate culture and resistance to new initiatives

What's interesting about these barriers to quality is that they map very well to barriers for innovation.  When we think about deploying innovation initiatives in an organization, we worry about strategic alignment and governance, how to measure and value innovation activities, how to build skills and competencies and how to overcome issues within corporate culture that may resist change or new methods and practices.  Quality programs and innovation programs face very similar challenges.

One of the factors that makes innovation and quality frenemies is what I like to call the "better things" question.  How much time, effort and resource does the management team want to devote to making things better (quality) versus making better things (innovation)?  It is often very difficult to get a clear answer to this question, and of course the answer changes depending on market conditions, competitive actions and a host of other inputs.

The big challenge, for innovation or quality, is obtaining executive awareness, commitment and engagement over a period of time to ensure quality and innovation become capabilities or competencies rather than short term fixes or projects.

 Questions

Paul's second question has to do with information gaps.  What big question needs to be answered to advance quality initiatives or programs more generally? 

Again, I think innovation and quality share a common attribute here as well.  Human nature being what it is, the question that gets asked constantly is "what's in it for me"?  While that may seem a bit cynical, it doesn't have to be.  People enjoy working for companies with a purpose.  When their individual purposes align to corporate purpose, they are much more engaged and aligned.  When new initiatives or programs are introduced, one of the first things many people ask themselves is: how will this affect me?  What about it is good for me, for my job or career? What about it is good for the company?  If we can solve the "what's in it for me" question we can remove a significant number of barriers for innovation, or for quality.

I've written previously about Maslow's needs hierarchy.  For most of the developed and even a good portion of the developing world, many basic needs are met.  When the basic needs are met, a consumer moves to more psychological or aspirational needs.  A focus on quality or innovation must understand that people don't necessarily "need" an ever better or higher quality product, or a ever new or disruptive product, but they may desire them to fill needs beyond their basic sustenance needs.  Again, what's in it for me becomes important, but in this case it's the consumer asking the question.  What does innovation, or quality, offer that I can't get from the existing product?  What aspirational or psychological needs are being fulfilled since many of the basic needs are met?

A second question that we should acknowledge is:  when is there "enough" quality in a product?  When does quality (or innovation) have a diminishing marginal return?  And when that happens, where do we point the quality artillery to begin a new assault?  Innovation advocates talk about "10 types" of innovation - product, service, process, customer experience, channels, business models and so forth.  Many who focus on quality (and innovation) narrow the potential scope of the exercise to focus only on products.  The next big step in either case is broadening the definition and introducing quality and innovation programs to a wider array of outcomes.

Whether you are focused on making things better or making better things, many of the challenges are the same.  While quality and innovation can work hand in hand, and sometimes in opposition, many of the factors that block their acceptance are the same.

Disclaimer
I’m part of the ASQ Influential Voices program. While I receive an honorarium from ASQ for my commitment, the thoughts and opinions expressed on my blog are my own.”

The Innovation Invitation

You can read a lot of lists about innovation, things to do, things not to do.   John Kotter posted one recently about building innovation into your company's DNA.  There's nothing new in the list, but that doesn't mean it's not an important list.  What caught my attention is that he placed the concept of "invitation" at the top of the list.

What do you invite?  What do you permit?

In any organization, the corporate culture reinforces attitudes, beliefs and perspectives.  When a person considers the risk and work involved to create a new product or service (to innovate that is), he or she must consider what the response will be.  Does the organization permit innovation and its corollary outcomes (risk, variability, uncertainty)?  Does the organization resist these concepts?  What about the executive team?  What does it "allow", tolerate or invite?

Note that while Kotter's list is about organizational culture,  the points on the list aren't necessarily cultural in nature - they are in fact suggestions about how executives should act to influence the culture.  One could, in fact, create action verbs to suggest how executives should be involved in innovation based on this list:

• invite innovation
• join innovation
• encourage innovation
• learn from activities, successes and mistakes
• model the behavior you desire

Again, little new here but worth a closer examination.  Replace "innovation" with any risky activity and the actions would be the same.

What does it mean to invite?

But take a closer look at "invite".  As the author notes, constantly requesting permission is arduous and costly for the person asking.  When we ask to pursue something risky or uncertain, we put not only ourselves and our ideas at risk, but we borrow some power or authority from the person we ask it from, placing them and their budgets and stature at risk.  Constantly having to ask for permission means that both the asker and the askee get worn down.  Constantly returning to the same sponsor for incremental approvals demeans the work and ensures the scope and effort will be reduced.

What if executives and the corporate culture "invites" innovation?  Or, perhaps, institute my personal mantra in this case:  Ask forgiveness not permission.  If we can trust our teams to conduct themselves in a manner that seeks the best for the company in their "regular" work, why can't we trust them to seek what's best for the company in innovation? If as executives you have concerns that the innovation teams will exceed their remit or explore ideas beyond the scope or strategy of the business, then your strategic goals and communication strategies stink.  Just as marketing and advertising are a tax for products that don't meet market needs, permission is a tax people pay for poorly defined and communicated strategy, or a lack of trust.

What the author fails to mention

When the author writes about innovation, she notes that if individuals are required to constantly ask for permission, they will tire of the activity and stop asking for permission.  But what I think she meant to add, or meant to imply, is that they won't simply stop asking for permission.  They will simply stop trying to innovate.  What's almost criminal about this action is that when innovation is critical to the success of the organization and must be done quickly and effectively, people who have stopped asking and stopped innovating approach the next innovation activity with far more skepticism and inertia.

We create our cultures through what we say, what we do, and what we reward.  If you don't invite innovation, your organization will still find opportunities, but the people seeking permission will soon find it difficult to accomplish anything.  Then, the learned behavior sets in to wait to be directed to innovate, rather than to actively and constantly seek new ideas.  You create the learned behavior your organization models and reinforces.  Do you invite innovation, or do you require people to seek permission?

Innovation is the future of your company

In every company there exist at least three simultaneous perspectives. The first is about the history of the company, its origins, growth, struggles, successes.  The history often defines perspectives and forms the basis of organizational culture.  The stories you tell, the way you remember things about the past all influence the culture, which influences the second perspective:  the present.  While the future is important, the present is paramount.  Most organizations spend the vast majority of their time worrying about today or tomorrow.  The present and the near present fill our days - will we complete a certain project on time?  Will we achieve our quarterly numbers?  And so on.

The overwhelming emphasis on the past and the present leave little time for contemplation of the timeframe or perspective that is increasing the most important:  the future.  Our current management teams have grown up in settings where the future is always coming but never seems to arrive.  Today however it seems that the future is always unfolding, always changing.  Patterns, business, economies even countries and currencies are no longer as stable and reliable as what they were.  Change is increasing and the future is approaching much more quickly.  William Gibson, the famous author has a quote I like:  The future is already here, just not evenly distributed.

So, you may say, this is good, but what does it have to do with innovation?

The nostalgic past

In many organizations, when a team encounters a new idea, their first exercise is to look to the past.  Did our organization ever examine or consider this idea, or one similar to it, before?  If so, what were the recommendations and more importantly, the objections?  Rosabeth Moss Kantor wrote a list of innovation barriers recently.    She suggested that one surefire way to block innovation is to invoke history.  If you look hard enough, there is always a reason or precedent you can find for not pursuing an idea.  This is what I call nostalgic history, and when I encounter this thinking in an innovation project I ask one question:  are the market conditions, competitors and consumer demands exactly the same as when this idea was rejected previously?  Because if any change has occurred in the intervening years, the idea may have merit now that it lacked then.  The nostalgic history assumes that the world hasn't changed, and that ideas once surfaced can be safely rejected forever.

But this nostalgic history is the least of your worries.  When a consumer demand or market shift creates a new need, your thoughts and considerations should be directed into the future, not the past.  You should be asking the question:  what if this trend continues?  What are the emerging needs, threats and opportunities, rather than, what did we do in the past?  The answers for your future growth don't lie in your past, but in your future.

The overstimulated present

But you don't have time for a careful review of the past, or a meaningful scan of the future, because your engagement with the present is all consuming, all encompassing.  The present is the enemy of careful thought, quiet contemplation and interesting innovation, because we are all firefighters now.  Our reward systems, recognition systems and compensation are tied to quarterly results and we've optimized systems and processes to demand our full attention to the present.

With this focus we hop from crisis to crisis, constantly sustaining our heads just above the waterline, constantly promising ourselves that when the time is right we'll focus on the future.  Einstein defined insanity as doing the same activities over and over again and expecting different results.  By this definition, current management styles and emphasis are insane.  Until you break the pernicious cycle of currentism, you'll never become more innovative, and that's where your best future lies.

The current future

And, after all, Gibson is right.  The future is already here, it's just not recognized or widely distributed.  New products will emerge before you can respond, and new needs and customer segments will unfold before you can react.  Until your organization places as much emphasis on the future, and its emerging needs, opportunities and threats, treading water is the BEST you can accomplish, and that will be a slow drowning anyway.  It's time for innovators to recognize that a shift in organizational focus is necessary.  Too often we turn to the past for guidance, when the conditions and experiences don't offer guidance in the current market and unfolding future.  Too often we allow an overstimulated, overscheduled present to distract us from thinking about the future.  What is innovation if not banking on the future of your job, your skills, your products and your company's future?

The future is now, and it's innovation

Make the cultural shift to spend more time and effort thinking about and experiencing the future through innovation.  Innovation offers the bridge between the imagination and the practical.  Sitting around thinking about the future is interesting but doesn't deliver results that can make your organization viable.  Innovating contemplates the future but takes action to ensure your place in that future.  You don't have a meaningful future without innovation.  Innovation is the future of your company.  If you believe that statement, then ask yourself:  how much time, effort, resource, funding are we investing in our future?

Corporate Innovators at the cusp of the next iteration

The more I read innovation surveys and comments from analysts and executives, the more I wonder about management thinking.  Recently Accenture published a nice survey of 519 executives in firms in the US and in Western Europe.  The survey repeats what many of us have known for years:  executives recognize the importance of innovation and are frustrated with the results.  According to the survey 93% of the executives surveyed felt their firms would depend on innovation for growth, but less than 20% believe their innovation strategy is delivering a competitive advantage.  These two critical points identify what is perhaps the most significant trap in corporate innovation:  the unrealistic expectations of return on innovation.

If we were to stop for a minute and contemplate the timescales for innovation, things might become a bit more clear.  For many firms, regardless of when the idea is generated, it will take several years to develop a new product, prepare it for launch and provide it to customers.  Then, after the launch, it may take another year or two before the new product reaches break even and begins to generate real profits.  So, from the generation of a new idea till the recognition of profits and differentiation from the new product or service, it's reasonable to expect the timeframe to span three, four or even five years for fast turn products, and even up to seven or eight years for products with longer development cycles.

Add to this the fact that many companies don't "bet the farm" when they start innovation activities, for several reasons.  First, no one wants to take on too much risk on unfamiliar and untried innovation tools and systems.  There's always an argument for "low hanging" fruit as the first innovation initiative.  Second, many firms single thread innovation activities, due to resource constraints, budgetary issues and general change management.  This means that for many organizations, their first foray into innovation is by definition a line extension.  Further, many innovators conduct serial innovation activities rather than attempt to run several innovation activities in parallel, due to the constraints mentioned above.  This means that not only are the first attempts line extensions, but due to the limited number of initiatives, few products are developed.  Add to these the fact that it can take several years for even simple line extensions to move through a tightly constrained organization, and three to five years on the CEO may be scratching his or her head, wondering where all the innovations are that they demanded and were promised.

From the tiny acorn mighty oaks grow

There's absolutely nothing wrong with incremental, controlled experiments to test new philosophies and methods, and the innovation results we are seeing now are simply the first harvest of careful innovation activities.  What will be telling for future innovation is whether or not executives recognize the fruit of their planting, and decide to extend and expand the activities, and hopefully accelerate them, or deem the whole activity a failure.   The limited supply and constrained result of innovation activities to date is entirely predictable.  After all, the vast majority of corporations have spent 30 years building highly efficient business processes, cutting costs and eliminating risk and uncertainty.  Over the last few years some executives have planted tenuous innovation programs or activities that have trouble grafting on to the efficient working and activities of modern streamlined business models.  It's not unreasonable or shouldn't be unexpected that the first innovation harvests are small.  But, as the old saying goes, mighty oaks grow from tiny acorns.  All it will take is time.

Compare these results to the people who examined the possibilities of some of our most important inventions.  After the luster of manned flight by the Wright brothers wore off, I'm sure there were many people who argued that the plane only flew a couple of hundred yards and could barely carry a single person that distance.  A good horse could cover the same ground in less time!  What those naysayers failed to see, and what corporations are at risk of today, is that the first harvests are always thin, but continued investment and development can lead to far greater results and outcomes. 

From furtive experiment to critical capability

Corporate innovation is simply in its initial phases, in many cases as furtive, inexpensive experiment in one small corner of the business, underfunded and poorly resourced.  Expecting miracles from this small experiment is unreasonable, but not surprising.  Executives are realizing that while their organizations are exceptionally efficient, they cannot cut their way to growth and differentiation.  Innovation is vital because it adds to the top portion of the income statement, rather than cutting away at the bottom end.  What's important now is a continued investment, a growing investment and engagement in innovation, to shift the concept from a furtive experiment tucked away in a corner to a central, critical, consistent capability.  Just as a few Six Sigma "black belts" entered organizations years ago and now dominate corporate philosophy and thinking, innovation is a nascent experiment that must be expanded and must become a cultural phenomenon.

Many writers and analysts, this one included, hold up Apple as the arbiter of good innovation practice.  What people forget is that Apple was near bankruptcy in 1997, and had no other choice but to cut product lines and develop new innovation strategies for survival.  Today, Apple progressed through a series of innovation maturity phases, and is a relatively mature innovator.  Of course they should be good at innovating.  Apple has had almost 15 years of innovation experience to build on.  When executives look at Apple and wish their organizations could innovate like Apple, they fail to see the challenges, investments and time it took for Apple to become a viable innovator. 

Out of sight of the shoreline

The real question for many corporate innovators is this:  now that the first attempts have demonstrated some limited benefit, will they take the next step and expand their innovation efforts?  Will they define larger opportunities, provide more resources, funds and time?  Will they shift innovation activities from the periphery to the center of their organization?

Early sailor never sailed out of sight of the shoreline, because they lacked navigational skills and weren't sure what was out in the deeper ocean.  Sailing near the shoreline was safer but ultimately limiting.  It was only when they took the next step that new lands were discovered.  The same analogy applies for corporate innovation.  Small attempts have been made and they've been moderately successful.  More significant results await if the resources are available and if the organization continues to develop innovation skills and capabilities. 

Many corporate innovators stand at the cusp of important decisions.  In one direction is additional investment to build innovation capabilities and expand the breadth and depth of innovation projects.  In the other direction is the safe and familiar efficient business model, where cutting costs and achieving greater efficiencies lie.  Successful firms will recognize that both capabilities are required, and will invest in developing and maturing an innovation capability.  These firms recognize that corporate capabilities don't grow overnight, and investment is required for multiple years before significant results are achieved.  Many executives will blanch at the investment and decide to "acquire" innovation by purchasing smaller, more nimble competitors or seeking out third party technologies, not realizing the bidding war that will unfold as the number of firms choosing these options increases.

Pareto and Innovation

Some laws or rules are dictated by leaders.  Some laws or rules seem to emerge from the information we gather about our work.  This is the difference between a taxonomy - an imposed framework, and a folksonomy - a framework that emerges from the data.  What's interesting is to understand how "rules" or laws like Pareto's Law applies to innovation, and why it is so constraining.

Pareto's rule or law or principle basically states that 80% of effects come from 20% of causes.  What this means in every day life is that 80% of a sales of a business come from 20% of its customers, or 80% of your output is based on 20% of your labor.  What's interesting in practice is to review the impact of Pareto on innovation.

Product versus everything else

In most organizations, the time and focus given to product innovation is at least 80% of the total time alloted for innovation.  There is a clear Pareto principle at work, although I believe it is often unintended.  Far too many organizations ignore innovation possibilities beyond product innovation, when plenty of examples demonstrate the power and possibility of innovation in business models, channels, packaging, customer experience and many other alternatives.

I think this particular Pareto failure is rooted in Apple's success. Apple's iPod, iPad and iPhone demonstrate product innovation, but Apple is successful based on other kinds of innovation as well - channel innovation (iTunes and Apple Stores), Value network (iTunes and AppStore), customer experience innovation (design).  While we recognize and celebrate the product innovation that Apple creates, we fail to understand the other innovations that actually create much of the value.

Far too many firms spend far too much of their limited innovation dollars and resources focused on product innovation, ignoring possibly more lucrative innovation opportunities in areas like business model innovation, customer experience innovation or channel innovation.

Incremental versus Disruptive

In most organizations, there's a decided emphasis on incremental innovation.  At least 80%, if not more, of the innovation initiatives are focused on incremental innovation.  Often, that's because there is no strategic focus on how much innovation is necessary for growth and differentiation across the three horizons.  Rather than plan innovation investments across the incremental - disruptive spectrum, companies are happy to settle in on small changes to existing products and services with only occasional forays into disruptive innovation.

The problem with this approach is that it is not strategic, it is accidental.  Without clear goals and plans for innovation, Pareto takes over and the vast majority of innovation activities are limited in scope, time and potential value.  While your teams are busy incrementalizing, scores of firms are attempting to disrupt your market or your customers. It only takes one successful new entrant to disrupt your customers or your market, so even if many of the disruptive attempts fails, only one needs to succeed to cause damage to your business.  You need to plan your innovation activities and intentionally distribute them across the three horizons, rather than allow them to clump in incremental innovation.

The same people

In most organizations, Pareto's rule is evident when you examine who is involved in innovation activities.  Typically a small handful of people are deemed to be the "innovators", while everyone else is expected to continue to focus on business as usual.  The handful of people who are considered innovators are often in demand across the business, and so can only spend a tiny portion of their time on innovation, once again demonstrating the Pareto principle.

Whether it's resources, people, dollars or focus, the Pareto Principle seems to be the dominant way of thinking about innovation.  While this is true, I think it is for the most part unintentional.  The Pareto approach to allocating people or time or focus is simply a fallback mechanism when explicit strategies and investments aren't defined.  And while Pareto suggests that 80% of the return comes from 20% of the inputs, it's rare that 20% of the people of an organization are actively involved in innovation, or that 20% or more of the innovation attempted is disruptive. 

Explicit, intentional strategies versus emerging fallbacks

If you truly want more innovation within your company, you need to start with an explicit, intentional strategy and define where and when you need innovation, how much innovation you need over the three horizons and how much innovation should be incremental versus disruptive.  Unless these goals are set explicitly and constantly reinforced, innovators and teams will struggle to achieve bare minimum goals and outputs.  Pareto's principle, or worse, a narrowly focused, poorly resourced activity with bare minimum goals will be the constant refrain.

The two most challenging innovation times

In the busy world we live in, people want simplicity.  We desire stripped down, short and to the point products, services and information.  Today the articles that were simplified for Reader's Digest seem too long and detailed for those in a 140 character Twitter driven world.  So I'm here to simplify innovation for you, and to tell you that there are only two periods when innovation is challenging.  Those two times are:  before you have an idea, and after you have the idea.

Placing emphasis on the wrong thing

You see, ideas are simply a way station.  Ideas can be thought of as a false peak.  You'll recognize the concept of a false peak if you've climbed a mountain.  Every time you crest a ridge you think you've reached the top, only to see in the distance a higher peak that may, or may not, be the summit.  Ideas are not the output of innovation, they are an intermediate point, a way station to an onward destination.   But because ideas are simple and tangible, we've placed emphasis on them.  To be honest, ideas are the easy part of innovation.  It's what comes before ideas, and what comes after, that are the real challenges.

What comes before ideas

What comes before ideas is the same set of activities and information that comes before any initiative:  planning, preparation, information gathering, synthesis and decision making.  Ideally someone identifies a key challenge or problem and everyone agrees on scope.  There's nothing really new or unusual here, except that much of the planning and preparation for innovation doesn't happen.  In a rush to get to ideas, we skip over much of what we'd agree is good project hygiene. 

If you've ever tried to force an innovation team through that hygiene, however, you'll encounter resistance.  People will complain that process and scope limit their thinking, reduce the set of ideas, slow them down.  And they are right.  But the best ideas - and remember that ideas are only the midpoint of the activity, not the end result - come from good planning, good interaction and good scope.

What comes after

What comes after a team generates ideas depends on your investment.  How many times have you seen a team generate ideas in a brainstorming activity, clap each other on the back to recognize success and then dump the flip charts into the trash?  Generating ideas is an activity, not an end point.  What comes after idea generation in good innovation practice is a lot of hard work - evaluating ideas, refining them into viable product concepts, testing the concepts with customers and then putting the ideas into development, to launch a new product or service.  That's hard, difficult work even for familiar products and services, leave aside the challenge or resistance encountered for new product ideas.

Many companies, with well-defined Stage-Gate or other product development methodologies struggle to consistently update their existing products.  How difficult must it be to convert even good ideas into new products and services, and further, to launch new products and services into the marketplace?

The Realization

It's only when you or your team realize that ideas are a way point that you begin to understand the real, value added work of innovation.   It's the preparation, planning, trend spotting and customer insight work that leads to good ideas, and its the evaluation, prototyping, refinement, testing and delivery to product development that leads to new product launches.  Innovation is a coherent process, starting with the recognition of needs or opportunities and ending with a successful launch of products customers value.  Ideas form one small part of one important but short activity within the totality of the innovation process, and in fact generating ideas is probably the easiest activity.  Good innovators understand that the real challenges lie before and after ideas.