By Christopher Miller, Ph.D., NPDP
They say they want innovation. Innovation is in the strategic plan. Innovation is all over the web site. The word innovation oozes out of the pores of the leadership like sweat off of a hyperactive teenage athlete. Now they have made you the Vice President of Innovation. But confronted with a commitment to:
- Real deep needs research, ethnography, getting off the beaten path and into the dirt of the consumers world
- Real investment in R&D, slogging through the years of building a research infrastructure and relationships that can produces again and again
- Restricting their creative flights of fancy to charters that will support the strategy
- Investing in a structured process with both rigor and flexibility, and personally sticking to it
- A financial and time investment equal to past successes now being sought
Let’s be honest, your organization probably isn’t there. Innovation; Bah Humbug. It can’t be done. Innovation is a canary in the organizations coal mine. If the organization gets the hick ups the canary dies. Leadership has unrealistic expectations. The stock holder has no patience. Those that have the market and technical understanding to make “it” happen are jaded and exhausted from repeated inflated projects with too few resources; or, too new to know any better. And you are in charge of THIS!?
Innovation is an organizational Bumble Bee. It can’t fly! But it does.
Share with us your innovation journey and ENJOY this video tidbit! Have a good day my fellow innovators.
