IF YOU ALWAYS DO WHAT YOU ALWAYS DID, YOU WILL ALWAYS GET WHAT YOU ALWAYS GOT
This famous saying implies a rather typical human behavior.
We all do that, but when it comes to innovation, it is especially painfully true. You see, there are tens of innovation frameworks: design-led-innovation, business-model-innovation, lean-startup, six-sigma and many more. I teach many of those, as part of my MBA innovation course.
The truth of the manner is that there is NOTHING wrong in any of those frameworks; and yet most companies continue to get disrupted and go out of business in-spite of trying hard to follow one or more of those frameworks.
When it comes to innovation that moves the needle, the most important questions are:
(1) Are you able to truly think out of the box and break your own business / company orthodoxies or those of the industry?
(2) Do you consider at all the full journey of your customer even outside the current touch-points with your company or are you still trying desperately to map the customer into what you offer?
(3) What is your company true purpose; do you and more importantly your people really believe in it and do customers care about it?
Those are the 3 key soul-searching and guiding questions wrapping innovation. I’d argue that the answers for those 3 questions in many cases is NO. And that there is the core of the issue…
Food for Thought !