'The 'surplus society' has a surplus of similar companies, employing similar people, with similar educational backgrounds, coming up with similar ideas, producing similar things, with similar prices and similar quality," Kjell Nordstroem and Jonas Ridderstrale said in their book Funky Business. Can a company expect extraordinary results if what they do is what other companies ordinarily do?
Even large, once-mighty corporations struggle to prevent the commoditisation of their products. The only hope is to deliver on oft-repeated promises of meaningful innovation. To do this, they must transform themselves into innovative organisations.
What's organisational innovation all about?
Consider a bureaucratic, hierarchical, cautious organisation that makes only carefully considered decisions. Contrast it with a lean, agile, flat one that sometimes makes mistakes but fails quickly. Which is more suited to navigating a dynamic business environment?
To use a metaphor from Star Wars, transforming corporate bureaucrats into creative workers is like turning obedient, mechanistic and orderly storm troopers into rebellious, creative and self-motivated Jedi Knights. To do this, you'll need to drag your people out of their conformist uniformity and encourage them to bring forth their personal traits, talents and passions. Free them from unnecessary rules and procedures and empower them to think, act, create and decide. Well, you'll probably also have to fire Darth Vader.
Why are companies scared of becoming innovative?
I confess —my innovation company has yet to shepherd a client through an innovation culture transformation. We have had discussions with several Asian corporations that said they wanted to become innovative organisations, but they all balked once they realised they really would have to change. It is not easy to change a bureaucratic organisation into a creative company. It takes at least three years of substantial effort and serious commitment — long-established traditions, routines and entitlements must be replaced with the practices of a lean, agile creative organisation. And it means executives must change themselves.
From copycat to creator
To help make corporate transformation easier, I have spent the last decade developing a method based on research and informed by my experience with my innovation company, which lives and breathes creativity and innovation each day. The transformation into a truly creative company involves five dimensions — leadership, commitment, collaboration, culture and structure/systems. To guide the process, we measure 56 variables showing which factors inhibit or support innovation in an organisation — for example, to build cultural momentum, executives must encourage their employees to try things and risk failure, which is anathema to the existing intolerance of failure.
My process includes these eight steps:
1. Change impetus: Changing a supertanker's course is not as easy as turning a speedboat. Before a corporation will consider change, it must be in real pain or have spotted an exciting business opportunity. This is normal — most people dislike change and undergo it only when forced to.
2. Check and diagnosis: A patient who self-diagnoses often gets it wrong. Likewise, organisations usually need outside help to see what, specifically, is wrong. An innovation audit identifies systematic problems both vertically, across different hierarchy levels, and horizontally, across different business units. The results let the "doctor" diagnose the organisation with a mild disorder, a serious but curable disease; or a terminal case that should continue on its current path until the end.
3. Leadership engagement: In the next step, each leader must evolve into a creative leader by following a path based on their individual cognitive preferences. Once that has happened, it's time to revisit the organisation's strategic core by writing an inspiring and potent corporate mission, a compelling vision and appropriate corporate values and then creating the strategic roadmap and action plan to deliver on those ideas.
4. Commitment in earnest: Commitment is the acid test. It encompasses commitment to a focused action plan for innovation transformation as well as the commitment of resources to realise this action plan.
5. Collaboration and culture momentum building: Now is the time to bring creative change to the full organisation. Start by introducing focused actions and initiatives to enhance collaboration and create momentum for a creative culture change.
6. Culture evolution and structural alignment: Now the focus is on ensuring the organisation works on deeper-rooted cultural factors — for instance, the personnel could stop being satisfied with mediocrity and instead demand excellence. Moreover, the organisational structures, policies and systems should now change to support an innovation culture.
7. Anchoring: The seventh step further reinforces the creative changes in all five dimensions to make them stick.
8. Measurement and results tracking: A second innovation audit checks on the success of the transformation and identifies what still needs work. This is also a good time to introduce an innovation measurement system to track future results.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if your organisation were to transform from copycat to creative? It may sound like a dream, but sooner or later something will force this change on you, and it's better done earlier than too late. After all, what's the option?
Dr Detlef Reis is the founding director and chief ideator of Thinkergy Ltd (Thinkergy.com), an ideation and innovation company in Asia; a lecturer in business creativity and innovation leadership at Mahidol University's College of Management; and an adjunct associate professor at Hong Kong Baptist University. He can be reached at dr.d@thinkergy.com