What Next?Sustaining Innovation

Presentation structure

1. Defining the innovation challenge

2. Identifying the most common obstacles to ongoing innovation

3. Providing some useful tools to overcome obstacles and introduce and support ongoing innovation

What this presentation is not about

Quick fixes or simplistic solutions:

7 Habits of Highly Effective Crustaceans

6 Sigma for Simians

What this presentation is about

It is the result of my research to answer a question:

Why does an industry so reliant on discovery (the ‘what if?’ question) not always innovate at later stages of business?

Why do we so often get stuck on the ‘what next?’ question?

My answers focus more on leadership creating the conditions for an innovation environment than on managing processes

What if?

What if?

What if we excited the protons in your body with a giant magnet and then took a picture?

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)

Thanks Sir Peter Mansfield and Paul Lauterbur!

What if?

What if?

What if we used the spit of a Gila Monster, a venomous lizard, to treat type 2 diabetes?

Byetta (exenatide)

What next?

Innovation often declines after the first ‘big idea’

Routine sets in as we shepherd the big idea through trials and approvals

The inevitable question is what to do next to capitalize on the innovation

Put another way – how can we be innovative in other aspects of the business in order to maximize return on the original innovation?

A step back – what is innovation?

Literally means ‘to make new’

A new idea or combination of ideas that challenges the present order

If efficiency is doing better what is already being done then innovation is doing what is not yet being done or doing it in a new way

Drucker says it is the “instrument of entrepreneurship”

Innovation is not measured by the discovery of some truth but by ‘performativity’ – usefulness

Hold on a minute…

1st objection: our work has no room for innovation

Things like drug submissions are very rigorous – the devil’s in the details

We need to focus on getting it right

We can’t risk screwing it up

Even in routine work there is room for innovation

Wait a minute…

2nd objection: we’re not creative types – we outsource that

We don’t do innovation, intuition or creativity

Everyone has at least one creative bone in them

You may have put them away in order to do ‘serious work’ but you can get your crayons back

Originality is over-rated

“The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources” – Einstein

The GETS principle

Back to our science roots

Innovation isn’t always a blockbuster idea

Go back to how scientists work - tinkerers

Little bits put together in new ways, building on the work of others

Continuing innovation in even the little things is beneficial

Be more ‘sciency’

Thank you Frederick Taylor

Father of time/motion studies and management engineering

Did wonders for efficiency but absolutely nothing for innovation

In time processes ossify

Routine murders innovation

Leads us to an important distinction – management focuses on keeping a system functioning; leadership focuses on nurturing innovation

The reaction to routine

‘Creative destruction’

‘Disruptive innovation’

Not just for anarchists anymore

New ideas kill old ones

Disruptive innovation

All innovation is corrosive to routine

Q1: How much chaos can you take?

Q2: How can we introduce innovation and still preserve the fabric of the organization?

Fear sparked by these 2 questions often quashes innovation – continuity of the organization trumps change

The shock of the new can make us put the brakes on innovation

Obstacles to ongoing innovation

Risk aversion

What’s the missing word?

Risk/_________

Risk aversion

We forget the reward part of the equation

Tendency to catastrophize – overweight the bad

Poor judges of risk (absolute and relative)

Test: which animal kills the most people?

a) Snakes

b) Dogs

c) Mountain lions

d) Deer

e) Sharks

Try asking – what’s the upside potential?

Answer D

Joint-decision trap

When we get together to make a decision we opt for the least risky option

Group-think is often lowest common denominator thinking

Impedes innovation

Cult of the org chart

We often see the org chart as a permanent fixture, to be defended

It is a representation of the organization at

a specific moment in time – it is fluid

An org chart is no more the organization than a bark is a dog

Indeterminacy

Not knowing what the results will be is profoundly disturbing in a goal-oriented culture

Ambiguity is destabilizing (a good thing, ultimately, but disturbing)

“Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties” – Erich Fromm

Closed planning

Innovation is something created by an inner team (probably with a bunch of consultants)

and unleashed on the (unsuspecting) rest of the organization

Not playing to your strengths

We often expect the same level of creativity from different people in the organization, regardless of their actual abilities

Accepting assumptions

Unchallenged biases obstruct innovation

Ideas bring frames of reference with them

“Don’t think of an elephant” (George Lakoff)

Silos

We often assume that learning in one area of the organization is not applicable in another

Or we assume ideas will move through the organization through some miracle of osmosis

Or we just don’t tell anyone in any organized way about our innovation cultivation plans

Misalignment & mis-measurement

Organizational practices like HR don’t align with innovation objectives or expectations

For example – no real rewards for risk-taking

We don’t measure innovation activity and communicate our results to the organization at large… or we measure the wrong things (successes, for example, rather than total innovation activity)

Ways to cultivate ongoing innovation

Put a fence around the innovation process

If innovation doesn’t serve the vision and strategy of the organization then it is just a bunch of cool ideas

Putting limits around the innovation process prevents digressions into less useful fields

People

People are not stupid – most in this sector have advanced degrees

People choose organizations based on their own comfort with risk and volatility – some go for large pharma companies, some for tiny biotechs

Work with what you’ve got

Be honest when assessing your innovation capability

People

Many ways to sort innovation capacity

Revolutionaries – will take risks, have ideas

Dissidents – have ideas but less likely to move on them; easily rallied

Silent supporters – will get behind innovation once initiated

Eeyores – immovable obstacles

People

Revolutionaries – 5%

Silent supporters – 60%

Eeyores – 15%

Dissidents – 20%

The environment

Creating a supportive environment for innovation is possibly the most important leadership task

It is about creating the conditions for innovation, not about some idiot-proof ‘9 steps to earth-shaking ideas’ process

If you do build innovation structures, remember they are meant to be provisional – they should be torn down when they have outlived their usefulness

Use external resources to refresh innovation environment or accelerate innovation

Innovation structures

Expand mandate of existing training & development teams in HR

Create innovation advisory group internally to nurture and evaluate innovations

Build an innovation incubator with the capacity to take innovations, develop them and sell them to senior management (or hire someone to do it)

Establish a fund or access to resources to enable people to autonomously develop their innovations (and give them the time to do so)

Let everyone know what you are doing

The Ebola example

Highly contagious

Remains highly virulent

Spread the infection of your innovation throughout the organization – as far as possible with maximum effect

Openness

Looping in with stakeholders and customers – knowing what their challenges and perspectives are can spark innovation

Open innovation – most successful model is Lilly’s Innocentive (now spun off) a virtual network of problem solvers working on challenges – 30% success rate

P&G also notable for linking in all employees globally to shared knowledge base

Can be replicated on smaller scale

Make time for innovation

If you don’t schedule it, it’s not going to happen

3M is legendary for its 15% rule – employees can spend 15% of their time on innovative projects of their own design

This requires 2 leadership traits – a light hand in oversight and trust

Solution looking for a problem

problem universe of possible solutions best solution

solution universe of possible problems best fit

Solution looking for a problem

We do this all the time in drug discovery

UK 92-480, an NCE developed by Pfizer’s UK R&D facility

Proved unsatisfactory treatment for hypertension and angina pectoris, its intended problems, but stimulated erections

Fight inertia

Inertia – things like to keep on doing what they’re already doing… even if it’s nothing

Reward success

Reward failure

Do not reward inaction

Rationale: support risk-taking environment, spur activity, fuel forward momentum

Shorten the failure cycle

Accept failure – it’s not catastrophic (usually)

Try to fail faster

Failure will appear as routine by-product of innovation

Capture and share learnings from failure

not

Sell the innovation

“Nothing happens until something gets sold” – Bob Metcalfe, founder, 3Com

Innovation needs take up in order to thrive

Informal and formal opportunities need to be created to sell ideas internally

Some ideas

Build and launch an ongoing innovation team, best if embedded in the front-line business units

Create ways to reward innovation generation – praise and recognition work!

Establish channels to communicate innovation vision and support across the organization and to sell it to decision-makers

Capitalize on social networks

Re-connect with your science roots

Paul McIvor

416.516.7095

416.906.1276 C

mcivor@RosettaPR.com

179 Fern Avenue

Toronto, ON, Canada

M6R 1K2

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