PODCAST: Unlock your inner game changer
Amer Iqbal was recently interviewed on Tigerhall on the topic of how individual game changers can drive innovation within their organisation.
Listen to the podcast on Tigerhall >
Despite the billions of dollars spent globally on innovation efforts each year, a recent KPMG study found that 60% of executives still ranked their company’s progress at the most basic stages. Clearly there is a disconnect between the level of investment in innovation and the results being shown.
Do you think companies are struggling with the question of why they need to innovate?
The increasing level of investment shows companies believe in why they should innovate, but there’s still a problem if execs aren’t seeing the value.
For example, when the Covid-19 pandemic first hit, as a society we declared healthcare workers, grocery stores and delivery drivers as essential workers. However, at the same time the business world declared innovation as "non-essential" - many innovation initiatives were shut down during this time. These companies realise innovation is important, but when time for short-term rationalisation comes, unfortunately what the CFO sees is "long-term evolution of the business model", so it's one of the first things to be cut.
So the question is no longer “why do we need to innovate”, but where organisations are getting stuck is on “how to innovate”
Despite all the investment and attention being focused on the innovation space, why are companies still failing at innovation?
There are three big problems with innovation:
- Innovation is hard to see
When the Wright Bros performed the first flight, people who saw it wrote it off as a gimmick. It wasn't reported on in a major newspaper until four years after the fact. There is often a gap between a game changer and people realising the game has changed - Innovation happens gradually
Jeff Bezos famously spoke about the difference between invention and innovation - to succeed you need a long-term willingness to be misunderstood. When Amazon Web Services (AWS) was first launched, it was seen as a toy and mostly used by small startups and hobbyists. It took years before the service was able to scale and serve the enterprise market. Innovation is not a lightbulb moment, success mostly comes down to the execution. - Innovation requires us to change
We see innovation incentivised in the wrong way - come up with a great idea and you could get an innovation bonus! These tactics come from the world of sales, but innovation requires a completely different set of metrics. Clayton Christensen wrote that for a disruptive operation to thrive, it can’t be forced to compete for resources with the core organisation. If you measure an innovation by the same metrics as the core business, you’re doomed to fail.
So is successful innovation something that’s up to the leadership of a company, or is it something that employees themselves can realistically drive?
Innovation practitioners have a habit of debating "top-down" vs. "bottom-up" innovation approaches. Truth is: you need both. Game changers exist everywhere in the organisation, but they need to play different roles.
The role of leadership is to create the right environment for innovation
Corporates fail because they hire smart, innovative people, but them put them to work in an organisational structure that wasn’t designed for the game changer to do what they do best. Leaders need to be responsible for creating the right structures and processes for innovation to exist and to be absorbed into the organisation.
The role of employees is to create momentum and scale innovation efforts
“Bottom up” innovation is what turns innovation from an academic exercise into a true game changer. Most innovation labs still employ just 10 people or less - would you trust the future of your company to just 10 people? The advantage of scale is that more experimentation can happen across more teams, which serves to break down departmental siloes that often stifle innovation efforts.
Can you give an example where this combination between “top down” and “bottom up” innovation could have helped?
In 2012, I had the opportunity to work on a project for Blackberry. They had been slipping in terms of market share, with only their native Canada and Indonesia remaining as significant markets. The project was to decode what was driving the success in Indonesia, with an intent to bottle this formula up and ship it to other Asian markets.
The primary reason we found for success was Blackberry Messenger (BBM), a free messaging service available only on Blackberry devices. With patchy network coverage and unique cultural behaviours around curated social circles, a reliable, free messaging app with group messaging features was enough to push BBM to the top in Indonesia.
However, we raised the looming threat of new messaging players like WhatsApp, Viber and Line - at the time they were still new but growing. People were buying Blackberry handsets simply to access BBM, but this would soon change if similar messaging apps became widely available on iPhone and Android. We created a proposal to spin off BBM as a standalone service, independent of the device – a radical proposition, but one that we felt would provide an entirely new business model for Blackberry that could have universal appeal.
Ultimately the proposal was unsuccessful and WhatsApp quickly became Indonesia's primary messaging app, fuelled by a $19bn acquisition by Facebook just a year later.
In this case, the "bottom-up" part of innovation had done everything it needed to do, but the "top-down" innovation had been lacking. There were no management structures to correctly entertain, validate and ultimately invest in the type of proposal that had been developed.
What practical tips can you give for game changers who want to drive innovation in their company?
Innovation is a long-term game, there aren’t any shortcuts or hacks. But a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step; therefore the most useful advice I can give is how to take that first step:
Top-Down: If you're a decision maker in charge of your organisation's innovation agenda: define your portfolio
The 5 Ways to Innovate provides a simple framework of the most common ways that corporates approach innovation. This framework can be used to create an innovation portfolio with a guide on how much to invest in each initiative.
Bottom-up: If you're a game changer: first step is to find your champions
For individuals looking to drive change in their organisation, understand that this is a collaborative activity. The first step should be to find allies in their peer group, as well as leaders who can act as champions. Don't get too caught up on a specific idea, these will change over time so focus more on the problem to solve. By starting with a vision for change, and building a community to serve this change, the basic building blocks of innovation begin to fall into place quickly.
Finally - whether you’re a leader or an employee, my biggest piece of advice is to start now. Don’t worry if the first step is wrong (it probably will be), but that’s how you get going!
I’ve seen to many gifted, creative people stand on the sidelines and complain about how things could be better. Understand that your power to be a game changer is only unlocked when you put it to use - and that time is now.
I’ll leave you with the words of Adam Grant: “The best time to shake things up is not when you’re struggling. It’s when you’re doing well—that’s when you have the time, energy, and freedom to innovate.”