I think I’m about to surprise myself by writing this blog. I feel a little like a previously devout believer about to recant on a lifetime of firmly held beliefs. Not because I have a knife at my throat or a gun to my head but rather because I think I may have been wrong. With that in mind I will write with care as I have no desire to upset anybody (especially my former self) as I explore the contention that you cannot create an innovative culture in a mature established business.
“Whoa there!” I hear myself saying “Have you lost the plot man? Aren’t you the former psychologist who has spent the vast majority of his working life trying to pull off just that trick?” Well yes – I am, but I think I owe it to myself to have a good hard, honest look at what the outcome of my efforts have actually been. So with 25 years of innovation experience behind me let me articulate three things, that on reflection, I now hold to be true:
1) It is possible for mature organisations to innovate – it does happen – just not frequently or consistently enough or at a high enough level of quality. The current demands from all quarters for “growth” merely highlight the lack of speed and quality currently being delivered.
2) Some cultures within mature organisations appear to be more conducive to fostering innovation than others – without doubt some organisation’s cultures are more receptive to external ideas but, and this is a big but, experience suggests that this doesn’t mean that they actually translate into a delivered innovation any more rapidly or frequently. Whatever, the culture, BAU has a ruthless knack for killing innovation.
3) It is possible to create a temporary innovation culture within a mature organisation through the application of external effort – but when the external support dissipates the innovative culture decays. Like a paranoid white blood cell the BAU machine is brilliant at sniffing out and rendering impotent any unprotected foreign body.
So against, that background of doom and gloom – where us senior execs in mature businesses are faced with the imperative to innovate but are also faced with the likelihood that anything we try to do to create a more innovative culture is likely to be short lived and inevitably doomed to failure – the question looms as to what should we actually do.
And now for my personal get out of jail card. I do believe it is possible for organisations to create standalone innovation capabilities that feed innovations into the mother-ships. I also believe that these capabilities are currently as rare as badgers in Harrods. However, it is exactly these capabilities that have currently captured my imagination and are driving my own creativity. I will be writing more about my blueprint for this type of standalone capabilities in future blogs, but, suffice to say, for now I am very, very excited about the possibilities. Which given the rest of the content of this blog is a welcome relief.
