For anyone in or around the tech sector this article is a must.... mainly because it identifies very succinctly the fact that purely having an innovative technology is nothing unless it goes with innovation in business models and strategies.
Today, innovation is
about much more than new products. It is about reinventing business
processes and building entirely new markets that meet untapped customer
needs. Most important, as the Internet and globalization widen the pool
of new ideas, it's about selecting and executing the right ideas and
bringing them to market in record time.
In the 1990s,
innovation was about technology and control of quality and cost. Today,
it's about taking corporate organizations built for efficiency and
rewiring them for creativity and growth. "There are a lot of different
things that fall under the rubric of innovation," says Vijay
Govindarajan, a professor at Dartmouth College's Tuck School of
Business and author of Ten Rules for Strategic Innovators: From Idea to Execution. "Innovation does not have to have anything to do with technology."
Here is a quote I liked:"Some organizations
are nearly immobilized by the notion that [they] can't do anything
unless it moves the needle," says Stalk. In addition, he says, speed
requires coordination from the hub: "Fast innovators organize the
corporate center to drive growth. They don't wait for [it] to come up
through the business units."
Indeed, a lack of coordination is the second-biggest barrier to innovation, according to the survey's findings. But collaboration requires much more than paying lip service to breaking down silos. The best innovators reroute reporting lines and create physical spaces for collaboration. They team up people from across the org chart and link rewards to innovation. Innovative companies build innovation cultures. "You have to be willing to get down into the plumbing of the organization and align the nervous system of the company," says James P. Andrew, who heads the innovation practice at BCG.
And here is some more....Indeed, a lack of coordination is the second-biggest barrier to innovation, according to the survey's findings. But collaboration requires much more than paying lip service to breaking down silos. The best innovators reroute reporting lines and create physical spaces for collaboration. They team up people from across the org chart and link rewards to innovation. Innovative companies build innovation cultures. "You have to be willing to get down into the plumbing of the organization and align the nervous system of the company," says James P. Andrew, who heads the innovation practice at BCG.
Of course, rewards
won't help if the inventions aren't focused on customer needs. Getting
good consumer insight is the fourth most cited obstacle to innovation
in our survey. Blogs and online communities now make it easier to know
what customers are thinking. Hiring designers and ethnographers who
observe customers using products at work or at home helps, too. But
finding that Holy Grail of marketing, the "unmet need" of a consumer,
remains elusive. "You need time, just thinking time, to step out of the
day to day to see what's going on in the world and what's going on with
your customers," says Stone Yamashita's Schuman.
