About a year ago I miscalculated — badly — on the Microsoft Kinect. In terms of speed of adoption, only Apple’s iPad has rivaled the Kinect. Aside from some tough comments on my blog, the long-term repercussions were low.
That’s pretty much what happens to a pundit who gets it wrong — nothing.
“We were too busy being strategic to do something obvious,” said Mr. Harish Bhat, the COO of the Time Products division of Titan Industries Limited.
That was just one of many choice lines I heard when listening to Bhat talk about Titan’s efforts to create new growth businesses, including two new and successful watch lines: RAGA, for women, and Fastrack, for younger consumers.
Delegation is a necessary survival skill for senior executives. But when executives delegate their discovery-related innovation tasks, the odds of them finding the surprising insights that often spur transformative-growth businesses decrease dramatically.
This thought crossed my mind as I participated in a review session for an interesting new growth business that a large company was considering. The session seemed innocent enough. Senior executives actively participated in the discussion. They made thoughtful comments and helped the team clarify how it should take the idea forward. Not surprisingly, the team members had more questions than answers, but they left with a clear plan to go learn more about the things they didn’t know.
“Summer” is a bit of an odd concept when you live 85 miles north of the Equator, and the weather seems to be pretty stable throughout the year. Yet, three sets of experiences over the past few months provided the kind of stimulation that led to at-the-beach-like reflections — and point to ways to accelerate the generation of breakthrough insights.
The first experience involved extensive field visits to India and China as part of work with a multinational company looking to boost growth in those markets. Our team collectively spent about 100 days across the two markets, visiting urban areas, rural areas, homes, retail locations, hospitals, and more.
Let me make one thing clear. I love entrepreneurs. I admire their creativity, ingenuity, and perseverance. I have stood in their shoes as we built out Innosight’s core business and explored new geographies and offerings. I have also funded many entrepreneurs through our company’s venture investment arm.
I am writing today, however, to praise corporate innovation.
Over the last couple of weeks in Singapore I’ve wandered the halls of the regional and global headquarters of three pretty big companies with more than $150 billion in combined revenues. I figured the calamitous economic news out of the United States and Europe coupled with riots in England would result in corporate cube dwellers walking around in a daze.
Instead, I saw three calm companies. People were going about their jobs, apparently unaffected by today’s turbulence. It just felt . . . different then the feeling I got walking the halls of companies in late 2008, when the feeling of dread was palpable.
The other day one of my colleagues had an interesting idea. He observed how we basically have two ways of engaging with clients. One is to form a consulting team that works with a client for several months. That hands-on guidance is valuable but too expensive for some companies. The other approach is a workshop where we train a group of people over one to three days. That approach is more affordable but “one-and-done” makes it hard to have a lasting impact.
“What if,” he mused, “we did something in between? What if we rented a big warehouse, and staffed it with a handful of coaches and guides? We could create tools to help people with rapid prototyping and concept design. For a few weeks at a time, teams would work out of the space, separating themselves from some of the “antibodies” of the core organization. Teams would also get hands-on guidance from other experts. Maybe they would learn from non-competitive companies as well.”
Please note that this offer is now close.
We’re in the final phases of editing The Little Black Book of Innovation, and my editor had an interesting idea involving HBR blog readers.
“We never see any good ideas,” lamented a senior executive. “People bring us ideas. But they just don’t have any . . . magic.”
At first, I found the comment surprising. I had just begun to get to know the company, and it seemed to me to be brimming with innovation energy, particularly among young employees who would regularly throw out creative “What if’s” during casual conversations.
I am on record of being “long” on innovation in Asia, and I continue to feel tremendous innovation energy in the region. I’ve seen fascinating developments inside both big companies and emerging startups. But observations during two recent meetings made me wonder about the degree to which Asia needs a “Woodstock moment” to realize its full innovation potential.
The first meeting took place inside a large company based in Asia. That meeting’s goal was to help accelerate the company’s innovation efforts. The day began with about 30 people in a room, including very senior leaders. The discussion was cordial, and the junior people in the room stayed quiet. Then the top brass left. Discussion opened up a bit, and the more junior people in the room began to contribute. Then the middle managers left, and the gloves came off. The most junior people expressed strong views about some of the specific efforts the company was considering and contributed a range of interesting ideas to the dialogue. Then the bosses returned. Cordiality and consensus returned, with the divergent discussion hidden from leadership’s view.
