When shouldn’t you innovate?

Innovation is a real business buzzword nowadays. Everybody seems to be innovating and everything is called ‘innovative’. It seems like a business hype, isn’t it? In my view innovation is all about doing new something really new. It’s difficult, as we all know: of every seven new product/service projects, about four enter development, 1.5 are launched, and only one succeeds. Doing some really new is a highly risky business.

Now, if you have great opportunities of growing your business in an easy way up selling or cross-selling products or services I advise you not to innovate but to wait. First exploit and then explore is my motto. So don’t innovate, when:

• …your brand – and line extensions bring you a lot of extra turnover and profits the coming years;
• …your organization is working at full capacity to meet the current huge demand;
• …when there is no real business need;
• …when your latest innovations are very successful and still need further exploitation.

Start innovating when it’s time to explore instead of exploit. A great indicator for a wake-up call for innovation is a quote of Azim Premji, the Indian chairman of Wipro Limited:

“When the rate of change outside is more than what it is inside,
be sure that the end is near. [Azim Premji]”

Innovation requires ‘outside-the-box-thinking’. In practice people go beyond their comfort zone only when they have to. From the old English proverb “necessity is the mother of Invention” we learn that creating new things starts with urgency.

I learned as a young manager that you can invent alone, but in an organization you cannot innovate alone. You need an awful lot of colleagues and bosses to make innovation happen. That’s because after the ideation of your product, you’ll need to design it, to develop it, to prototype it, to test it, to produce it, to sell it, to invoice it and to service it. The successful way is to innovate together.

When it’s time to innovate, the way to get your colleagues more innovative is to reach out to them and to let them experience innovation is necessary. They will only change their attitude if they get new insights themselves. So, you have to create a situation where they discover themselves what’s happening out there: how markets, customers, competitors and technology are changing. Talking to customers with changing needs, discovering new upcoming competitors, exploring new technologies will ‘open them up’. They will realize our company will have to innovate.

Pick the right moment to innovate and reach out to our colleagues before the road ends.

Published in collaboration with LinkedIn

Author: Gijs Van Wulfen is the  Founder of the FORTH innovation method.

Image: A couple walk past “Filament Lamp”, an art work installation, at a commercial center near a construction site in Beijing’s Sanlitun area May 7, 2013. REUTERS/Jason Lee