The cry has gone out in almost every organization I work with for more innovation. CEOs decry the lack of innovative people and CFOs wring their hands over lost potential revenue. Academics and consultants toil to find out why people in medium and large organization are not innovative.
Yet, often just across the street from these organizations there is a small shop or apartment where innovation flourishes. There is someone who has come up with a new idea (or several of them) and struggles to find the funding or the marketing approach to success. I was recently at a conference of recruiters and was amazed and intrigued by the many small companies showing off innovative ideas to improve the recruiting process. There were solutions for communicating with candidates, for finding potential candidates on the Internet and for target marketing to specific candidates. Individually many of these are probably not going to be commercially successful, but they demonstrate that creative ideas are far from dead. While they may lack the means to grow to market significance because of their size, they just don’t flourish in the bureaucratic institutions we have developed either.
Corporations are superb executors. They can manufacture existing products at low cost and in high volume. Where they fail is in understanding what has to exist for creative success. A recent Harvard Business Review pointed out some research by Feirong Yuan of the University of Kansas and Richard W. Woodman of Texas A&M who found that worries about image can lower a persons willingness to be creative. They also found that people who are not specifically assigned to be creative worry that co-workers will think badly of them if they try to offer new ideas. There is also the fear of being labeled as different or weird that turns people off from even trying to think differently. Status quo is a powerful antidote to innovation.
Employees also have little to gain by being innovative. Those who innovate find their new idea or product quickly incorporated into the mainstream of the organization with little recognition. Many companies pay only $1.00 or other token amount for patents granted. The upside is not there for people to take risks, expose themselves to potential ridicule, and face possible failure.
It is probably too much to expect large organizations to suddenly blossom in innovation or to find ways to incentivize people to put forth new and strange ideas.. Perhaps Cisco Systems and other organizations have found the best approach: watch the market carefully for start-ups and new ideas. Acquire these small companies early on but let them operate independently of the mother ship. When they have grown to a respectable size, then integrate them and leverage the manufacturing and marketing power of the larger firm. This is a model that has had success throughout the ages. Michaelangelo had a patron who left him alone to create but gave him the medium to best give him visibility. The same is true for Beethoven and Mozart and many other artists whose patrons, were in effect, the equivalent of the modern corporation. We are just now recognizing that large organizations have many strengths but being creative is not one of them. Employees would rather do what is expected than risk being innovative. Especially when innovation carries almost no reward, is not supported by internal systems, can alienate friends and fellow workers and can potentially generate more revenue when implemented outside the corporate walls. Most employees are saying to themselves, “Innovate? Not here, not now.”
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