I have always wondered how it was
for the losing civilization when two civilizations at opposite side of the cusp
of technological innovation collided. How did the Stone Age tribe cope with the
first conflict it had with a tribe that had moved to Bronze Age? How did the
Bronze Age kingdom cope with the first conflict it had with a kingdom that had
moved to Iron Age? I had the ring side view of it as I completed a book ‘By
Right of Conquest’ - by G.A. Henty. It is a historical fiction woven around Spanish
conquest of Aztecs in 16th century. Few hundred Spanish equipped
with superior modern armaments like canons, guns, chain mail armour and cavalry
overwhelmed multitude of Aztecs who were armed with wooden clubs, bows/arrows
and spears and saddled with a dogmatic emperor.
My first reaction as I finished
the book was to thank god that our civilization no longer faces such situation.
But a moment later, a wave of realization hit me. A realization that this
conflict is becoming more “continuous” with passage of time. Such battles are
being fought more often, and are more secular in their impact and the only
thing that has changed is the rapidity at which these battles are coming our
way; thereby, reducing the reaction time of participants and the fact that they
may have turned bloodless but the outcome is the same – Merciless decimation!!!
Few years back Blockbuster video
rental chain had successfully transitioned to DVD era, Motorola and Nokia in
succession used to be the king of hill as far as mobile handset were concerned,
Sun Microsystems was an acronym for innovation and Yahoo was pioneer in web
search and file sharing.
Look around, all of them have
lost ground badly and have either vanished or naysayers are having field day
predicting their doom. What went wrong for these organizations? How did they
lose the plot?
The answer is simple, they could
not innovate and keep step with the changing times. So next million dollar
question is why these organizations failed to innovate? Was it because
leadership of these organizations was any less focused on innovation? I do not
think so, the leadership of these organizations wanted innovation as much as
any other organizations but it did not happen for them. And the issue lies in
the existing model of innovation and quite frankly pervades most of the
organizations.
Notwithstanding the pep talk it
receives from leaders, innovation has remained preserve of select few. Because
they have earned their stripes, select senior leaders or Product Managers
decide the focus areas, priorities and funding for most of the organizations.
But are they best placed/equipped to make right calls? The pace at which
demand, competitive and technological landscape is changing; the person making
these calls should have her ears to the ground, eyes on customer and
competitors. If this is right criteria, then frontline employees dealing with customers
who are closest to the changes in technology will be my bet to drive innovation
agenda of any organization.
But it takes a great deal of
humility, courage and leap of faith for a senior leader to acknowledge that
what worked for him in past is not the winning trick anymore and a frontline
employee may be having the key now. Once that psychological chasm is crossed
the next challenge is to equip the frontline employee with paraphernalia to
innovate and that is where leaders need to put the money where their mouth is.
With the maddening focus on
improving utilization, most of the frontline employees find it difficult to make
time to sit back, and analyze if there is a better way to solve the business
problem. Select few, who come up with an
innovative idea have only Line manager to turn to for maturing the idea and
more often than not, for line manager, today’s deliverables are bigger priority
than tomorrow. Few ideas that survive the random selection filters of Line
managers and leadership, get executed.
Successful leaders democratize
the model of innovation, devote organizational resources (read time and
incubators) and establish a market place of ideas to ensure survival of fittest
and align compensation philosophy to support this democratized model.
This democratization can be
achieved by -
1. Allowing
employees to devote chunk of their time to develop an idea they believe in,
2. Setting
up innovation labs that would help
employees mature the ideas without scrutiny of line managers,
3. Establishing
market places for ideas where ideas could get listed and employees could support
these ideas by investing their time (by working on ideas generated by others). Ideas
that receive poor response would die a natural death.
This democratization of
innovation model would ensure improved engagement of employees, larger supply
of ideas and better selection methodology with a robust incubation of ideas
that are backed not by executives but by people who are closer to the tide of
technology and demand.
