Apr 11, 2014
What do eBay, Coke, Proctor & Gamble, GE, Whirlpool and 3M have in Common?
Recently these companies, and others, participated in the Unleashing Innovation Summit in NYC which I had the pleasure of attending. There were organizations from around the globe that came together to focus on innovation with an emphasis on people and culture. It was great to see innovation thought leaders discussing this very critical issue and have them reinforce what I have believed and practiced for over 15 years. There was lots of sharing of experience on what worked and what didn’t when adopting an innovation focused culture.
So What’s Working…
From the group of participants it appears that companies are doing a good job at identifying the opportunities to address and are managing through the process of innovation rather well. In their approach, large companies are striving to emulate small company’s entrepreneurism. Companies are forming non-traditional partnerships and looking within their organization to their employees for solutions to improve the customer experience. As an example we heard first hand about the success and challenges overcome in the design and launch of Coke Freestyle. From the experience I have had leading change initiatives, leaders traditionally find the process improvement portion to be the easier part, mastering it more quickly. This appears to hold true in the evolution of the adoption of innovation.
Today’s Challenges…
From case studies, fireside chats and storytelling we learned that the challenge of ingraining innovation into the culture was a difficult one facing many companies. Also, the majority of companies are still grappling with the vulnerability of risk. While we all understand the benefits of “fail, fail fast and fail often” it is still difficult to successfully make that part of an organization’s culture. A culture where employees are not punished for making mistakes appears to still be a rarity. Some of the successful cultural initiatives to overcome this we heard about included Innovation Day at United Health Group, Viz Kitchen from eBay and the BASF Cultural Ambassador program as forums to involve employees and even in some cases customers in the innovation process.
As a change leader I’ve found that fully delivering a cultural change takes effort and time. The effort put forth in ensuring all of the moving parts align can be daunting but pays big dividends. And affording the needed time to not only do it right the first time but in allowing employees to adapt and adjust is not something you can fast forward through – there just aren’t any short cuts to quality change.
The Future…
For me, the signs are clearer now than ever. Organizations are looking within for ways to better delight customers, engage employees and impact their bottom line. For companies wanting to do this through innovation the biggest challenge appears to be fostering a culture of innovation. For us innovative change agents, our time has come!
Category: Intrapreneurship
