Urgency: It Kills Innovation
As the pace of business gets faster and faster, everyone working with innovation is getting trapped in this little box called urgency. We just don’t have any time anymore.
Here are three short examples on how this impacts innovation:
We should adopt Google’s 20% rule. We need a more innovative culture so let’s give our an employees 20% – or maybe just 10% – free time to work on their own projects and thus help bring out more and better innovation. You can’t just find extra time like that in an already lean organization so if any executive comes up with such an idea, it tells you that he/she does not live in the real world.
There is no time for reflection. I think we can all agree that quality work requires some reflection on the thoughts behind the action. Even more so with innovation. More time equals more reflection, which equals better innovation. But we live in a box of urgency…
Your company has finally discovered open innovation and now you are getting ready to embrace it within the organization. However, no one really considered the time it takes to build and nurture the relationships that are key for open innovation and no one can find time for this. What a showstopper…
We live in a box of urgency and this kills innovation.
Corporations want money, not innovation. You'll earn more, by building 10 000 the same products than think about it and improve.
Very sad but most of the times true – they only want money and they want it NOW, not tomorrow. Most of companies take the following approach : Unless the company is dying they won't innovate. Fortunately there are still some commpanies that take time to have Innovation. Regards.
I can follow you here, but I also think that things are changing. Big companies are starting to "get" innovation and this will move even faster as we get a new (younger) generation of executives in place. However, it will take some years…
Respectfully, by placing all of the blame on an external condition of urgency, you deny the innovators an opportunity to find solutions. Yes, things do have to be done more quickly but individuals are making decisions about how they spend their time and the decisions have consequences. Are the innovators asking themselves, "do I have to take this meeting or is there another way to get the information? Is this information even mission-critical? Is this a relationship I need to foster?" Likewise with how people choose to spend their time online and on email. Imagine the relationships that could be nurtured if we refused to be part of the statistic of time-wasting internet users. Yes, there are external constraints but I'm not about to give away my internal power over my work and my choices.
Hi Lauri, urgency is an internal as well as external factor. When this is said, then I agree with your points. We need more personal leadership in the context of time management.
Urgency is not all bad. Artificial urgencies can be even better. using a phrase like "our competitor just received a patent that makes our latest R&D effort obsolete", or "we've just lost our latest customer due to price", or "our sales or R&D manager just left for the competitioin", or "the FDA has just outlawed our product", or anything similar followed by "What do we do?" can be great idea stimulators.
I actually think urgency is one of the factors that can help open innovation efforts. When an executive with accountability for delivery is convinced that using an external technology can help get a product to market faster, it provides a great opportunity to rapidly build internal alignment. You still have to mange all of the challenges of the internal and external alliances, but that type of support is critical in getting people to open their eyes on the possibilities.
Balance is the key here – as it is in many other cases
[...] que marcan los directivos. Una de las palabras más escuchadas en cualquier empresa es “no tengo tiempo“, algo que es totalmente contraproducente para generar innovación y desarrollarla, ya que [...]