While attending the Ispim Asia-Pacific Innovation Forum 2014 in Singapore a few weeks ago, I participated in a roundtable discussion with the intriguing title "Are executives suffering from innovation fatigue?"
Innovation fatigue? We're in the innovation economy. How can one ever get tired of innovation? Those were my initial thoughts. After all, carefully planned and well-run innovation events elicit feelings of joy, eager anticipation and excitement in participants, don't they? Well, after actively contributing to the discussion, and linking it to my former experiences as a competitive runner, I got a better grasp of the underlying causes of innovation fatigue — and some ideas on how to cure the problem.
What is innovation fatigue? We may define innovation fatigue as a lessening in one's response to and enthusiasm for innovation, typically as a result of overexposure to innovation projects. Do your staff approach a new innovation project with a sense of lethargy, boredom, or even dread? If so, you know that something has gone wrong with your good intentions to promote innovation in your company. But what?
What causes innovation fatigue? If you're a runner who's competing in too many races over a season, sooner or later you lose your winning edge. You tire physically and mentally as you don't have enough time to recuperate; you are more likely to pick up an injury or make tactical mistakes during a race. In short: competing in too many races results in excessive fatigue, a dip in performance, and eventually injuries or even burnout.
In the same way, innovation fatigue may be spurred by running too many innovation projects, especially if they don't deliver the hoped-for results due to a lack of preparation, poor scheduling, involving the wrong participants, and unrealistic performance expectations. Let's briefly look at each of these factors:
Insufficient preparation: Just as a runner trains for a race, participants in an innovation event will be more successful if they have undergone training in how to think more systematically and creatively.
Wrong participants: People who are more efficiency-focused than innovation-focused are the wrong ones for an innovation event. Hiring amateur innovation facilitators is an even worse mistake.
Timing: In innovation and running, fatigue sets in if you schedule too many events in too short a time.
Unrealistic expectations: Do you expect a novice runner to win her first competitive race? Likewise, don't send people to their first innovation event and expect them to come up with earth-shaking ideas.
Who is to blame for the causes of innovation fatigue? Let's face it: dilettante "innovation experts" who lack expertise and experience are one cause. Becoming an international expert in innovation or any other domain requires you to invest roughly 10,000 hours of dedicated and disciplined work in the field. That's eight years of working for five hours each workday in a highly focused way on issues related to your specialisation. You also need to be deeply passionate about your chosen field and to possess a natural talent for it.
With the advent of the "innovation economy", marketers, consultants and trainers have jumped on the bandwagon and relabelled themselves as "innovation experts" without having put in the necessary work to truly become experts.
But let's be honest: corporate decision-makers account for innovation fatigue too. They may hire greenhorn innovation "experts", or fall for promises of fast and sizeable improvements in return on investment (RoI) or a 100% success guarantee, which no true innovation expert would dare suggest. They may also overload innovation workshops because they want to get too much from one event.
How can you cure innovation fatigue? Here are five tips:
Carefully plan and spread out your innovation projects over a year, thereby avoiding scheduling conflicts with other organisational priorities.
Focus on one target result at a time. Notice the important difference between innovation training and an innovation project. The former centres on learning and the latter on direct production of meaningful ideas and tangible results. Innovation workshops are more complex and resource-intensive and typically command a premium.
Resist the temptation to mix innovation training with projects, as you're likely to get neither good learning nor really good ideas. First train, then do.
Hire professional innovation experts. Most genuine experts have worked hard for years to develop their own original methods, and need to amortise these development costs. Please resist the temptation to pressure them for discounts, and pay them the professional fees they deserve.
Track your progress, but don't obsess over short-term results: While something like sales training or focused sales initiatives may translate into measurable results in the short run (say one quarter), many innovation projects bear fruit only in the medium run (say, one to three years). More often than not, it takes months or even years of persistent work before a new product is shipped or a new service launched.
Dr Detlef Reis is the founding director and chief ideator of Thinkergy Ltd (Thinkergy.com), an ideation and innovation company in Asia, and a lecturer in business creativity and innovation leadership at Mahidol University's College of Management (www.cmmu.mahidol.ac.th). He can be reached at dr.d@thinkergy.com