The Frustration of Open Innovation
Last week, I held a workshop in which a couple of the participants – all from the same company – had some struggles finding out why they should embrace open innovation.
This scepticism was not driven by satisfaction with their current innovation processes and culture . On the contrary, this seemed to be seriously flawed creating lots of frustration within their organization.
So you should think they would be open to changes in their approach. They were not and I think their main reason for being sceptical came as they understood that open innovation requires a lot of hard work while also bringing the uncertainty that usually follows changes.
Even more importantly, they could see this will not happen if they do not have full support from their executives to go open. They do not have this. The executives did talk about going open, but they had not yet managed to truly embrace this new paradigm shift.
No wonder innovation-driven employees in a company with a flawed process and culture and no clear leadership on how to deal with this become frustrated.
So they rightfully asked the question why should they embrace open innovation. I used the traditional arguments that if done right open innovation provides access to larger pool of resources, faster speed to market and higher innovation productivity. It took a while but the participants eventually bought fully into the idea that you need to go open in order to win the innovation game.
It helped that the other companies at the workshop did not have this scepticism. On they contrary, they fully believed in the concept although they – as any other company – had their struggles gettign this right.
This made me think that open innovation – with all the change and uncertainty it brings – can be extremely frustrating to innovation leaders and other employees. Especially if they are led by executives who are not fully capable of leading in tough times.
How can companies as well as individual deal with this frustration? I will think further about this and it would be great hearing your input…
I think that this is the core problem that we face when we're in workshops and classes Stefan. I run into the same thing (although it's skepticism about the value of innovation in general) – and that frustration is a core element of being an innovative person in a non-innovative company. I keep trying to think of ways to help, but it's hard.
In my case, I can recommend doing as much as peopl can get away with – to just start experimenting within the scope of the budget and authority that they have. This often works for innovation in general. But I'm not sure it would work for open innovation.
That leads to a key question – is it possible to have open innovation without top management buy-in?
At the workshop, we talked about what to do when you work in a company that is not committed to innovation. The best advice was to try to "influence back" towards your managers and executives. However, this is difficult and even if you are able to influence others it takes a lot of time.
My other piece of advice on this is simple. Leave. Find another job. If you want to make innovation happen your odds are better if you find a different company rather than staying and trying to turn things around in a place that is not committed to innovation. You can do the latter, but again: it is difficult and it takes time.
The funny thing here is that people who work at large corporations quickly get used to the way things work in such places. Thus they end up staying rather than pursuing better opportunities. It is amazing how fast people get stuck for the wrong reasons.
My response to your question is simple too. No. You can not have open innovation without top management support.
I'm also wondering whether the kinds of attributes that make people want to be 'innovative' are not the same as those required to build and maintain the structures and processes required fro open innovation. This causes internal tensions and frustrations … "I want to be an innovator, but they've turned me into a manager of innovation processes"
John, I usually distinguish between innovation leaders who works to build the innovation processes and DNA of a company and an intrapreneur who make the specific projects happen. These are two different jobs that require different skills and mindset. The job of an innovation leader is to develop and manage innovation processes and if you put a true intrapreneur to do this, you will most likely get a very frustrated employee.
[...] The first talked about how a number of people in his open innovation workshop last week were very frustrated with the innovation process within their company. The second followed up a comment that I made on the first one – where [...]
You are absolutely right Stefan, you cannot have a successful OI without top management support. Getting their attention is often what the job entails for middle managers. Many middle managers see the value quicker than the top manager for a variety of reasons (more specialised, more focused, closer to the pulse of the market) and it is through some healthy experiementation you can begin to build the case for change.
Building the OI case is a thoughtful process and the nuiances specific to the situation are often difficult for many to get clear. You cannot use P&G for example if you do not have the culture, commitment, leadership and investment that has gone into getting P&G to this moment of time and argue for the same within your very different environment, and then expect quick results.
Finding a early win that demonstrates the value of a more open innovation approach is one of the most powerful ways to demonstrate the value of this change. Recommending finding two or three early wins that can still fall within the scope of existing parameters and showing these successes is incredibly empowering to share with top management so as to move the decision along to open up further is one of the best suggestions.
Stefan – Thanks again for a provoking topic. Similar to 'traditional' innovation, 'open innovation' often means very different things to different people. Evangelists of open innovation, both internal and external to a company must face the challenge of putting their solutions into a context that leaders and senior managers in an organization can appreciate.
As you, Paul & Tim have shared – many people have a concept of open innovation that may either be too narrow or too broad to fit their organizations.
For example, people who define open innovation too narrowly often state that 'we have always done that' implying that they have worked with universities and small companies in the past. This response tends to shut the door to further OI discussion. OI remains a discrete transaction rather than a driver of new relationships, attitudes and flow of new ideas.
People who define open innovation too broadly for their current culture may point to P&G and say that 'it will never fly here' and dismiss OI because it is too hard. Again, OI remains a topic that is not embraced out of fear that a failure will not be tolerated and the consequences of the failure can be too harsh.
These opinions are shaped by internal storytelling and discussion. As long as the stories are out of context OI continues to be a frustrating topic. Let's hope that our actions will support positive future stories.
As usual, a thought-provoking topic, Stefan…I was thinking the exact same thing that Mr. John Heap wrote above: That the people in charge of designing and implementing the "process" for innovation are typically not the same types of folks doing the actual "creative work" of coming up with new ideas and projects. But, alas, as we know Innovation isn't just about being creative. Sometimes it is all about following a process for incremental or sustained innovation.
I think the most successful companies that our firm has worked with possess a healthy blend of both types: "process people" (engineers, business, etc.) and "visionaries" (designers, brainstormers, software guys, etc). There will always be conflicts and drama between these 2 forces, unfortunately, but a heavy imbalance to either end of the spectrum creates some real issues that companies will never surmount.
Excellent discussion! (Might Tweet this!)
http://www.flagpole-software.com
http://www.us-mindmatters.com
If YOUR goal
is "INNOVATION"
and YOU
- want ME
- to help YOU
- to do "THAT"
it is just another burden
on my current time and energy
and I may risk being "unproductive" in my job
(by "complaining", missing my deadlines, or not getting my promotion, etc)
If you want
- to help ME
- to find a way
- to do MY job better
- in a way that also helps US
- to meet OUR goals and BOTH be rewarded
then THAT will Help ME to Help You and aggregate to help US
to all EQUITABLY enjoy the mutual benefits of OUR INNOVATION efforts.
Is innovation your goal – or our result?
Is that why innovation so "hard" to implement…?
The metrics are less developed in this emerging discipline than in traditional innovation. In my last blog I outlined a list of the sorts of direct and indirect measures that firms can use to capture all the value that innovation brings. This same list holds true for open innovation. You will want to profit from collaborations and there will still be the usual associated costs. Given the motivations to collaborate (better innovations delivered cheaper and faster) you would expect the benefits to be.
Clark
cissp
USA
Hi all,
Just my 50 cents on this…
We, as sellers of open innovation software, training, tutoring, ect., should also think twice in how we deliver our message to potential customers!….Reading these discussions, and similar on the subject, its the same cases on open innovation, that is mentioned again and again! P&G, Starbucks, Motorola……..Next time when presenting thoughts on open innovation one should ban these worn out references of the presentation, and instead find cases with more anonymous companies….this would enable the prospect to relate much more to our thoughts and promises on open innovation!;-)