The Curse of Knowledge

A recent article in the New York Times entitled "Innovative Minds Don’t Think Alike" by Janet Rae-Dupree really misses its mark. Instead of innovation, what Ms. Rae-Dupree seems to be referring to is market acceptance which is another subject entirely. Granted, the commercial world really has little value for innovation for innovation's sake, but describing a product as not being innovative because engineers can't describe it properly to consumers is just missing the whole concept of innovation.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not a big fan of cool but useless technology, but an innovative idea is not necessarily a useful one. That being said, often times a "useless" technology will morph into something more useful and even commercial over time. Examples: too numerous to list.

Both collaboration between stakeholders and feed-back from the market are indispensable aids in guiding product development. But they can stop innovation dead in its tracks. The constant need for buy in from stakeholders and the market while the idea is developing will stymie its development and can reduce it to a merely incremental one.

An ever present danger in developing innovative technology solutions is that you become so entrenched with the solution that you can no longer talk about it in layman's terms. You think you are describing it in terms an eighth grader can understand when in fact most Ph.D.'s in the field think you're speaking in a language somewhere between ancient Etruscan and Klingon.

But this is actually a good thing as far as being innovative. If everyone understood your "innovative" product upon hearing about it for the first time how innovative could it really be? Either you've got your message down perfectly or it's just too obvious.

But Ms. Rae-Dupree's premise is that if laymen can't understand the product, even in the development stage that it is anti-innovative and you are definitely off track. Again, maybe a quick check with a definition would help. Real innovation happens in committees? If this were true the U.S. government would be the most innovative organization around.

Certainly one impediment to non-linear thinking is that you'll be met with a lot of skepticism and blank looks. Take this as a compliment; disruptive ideas are by their very nature unobvious and people are naturally resistant to ideas they don't understand. In fact they can be down right hostile.

There is no doubt that market acceptance is the goal for a commercial product whether innovative or not. But if you are developing a truly innovative product, a disruptive product that will introduce a new paradigm to the market, then don't expect everyone to understand it. The trick is to maintain just enough connection to the market to be real without corrupting the creative process.

Blue Ocean Tide

Having heard the terms "Blue Ocean this, Red Ocean that," I thought I'd check to see what all the buzz is about and have been reading Kim and Mauborgne's "Blue Ocean Strategy." First, let me say that I am a confirmed believer in Clayton Christensen's excellent "The Innovator's" series and I think he's on to something. At least I haven't read anything previous to it that has explored the same area. But K&M are pitching essentially the same premise just with a different angle. One of their case studies even covers the same company.

The "Blue Ocean" K&M refer to is an uncontested, new market wide open to new entrants. Companies and entrepreneurs should seek out these Blue Oceans to introduce their products and services. But this is exactly what Christensen describes as a disruptive technology; one that enters an underserved market that currently has no other competitors. In fact, the "Blue Ocean" book is entering a "Red Ocean" market; a market already served by Christensen's books.

The secret to turning a dry academic tome into a best seller lies in engaging case studies; give the reader some real world examples that they can relate to. I'm a bit more forgiving of K&M since they did analyze a different set of companies although even here they duplicated Christensen by analyzing Southwest Airlines. If there is one differentiator between Christensen and K&M it's that Christensen seems to focus on U.S. companies and K&M have broadened their scope to include global companies.

Now the kicker: both Christensen's and K&M's books are published by the Harvard Business School Press. What's going on here? Is HBSP attempting to monopolize the world of innovation/new product books? Perhaps the market for these books is vastly underserved giving them a Blue Ocean to pump more books into?

The theories introduced by Christensen, even if they prove to be true, are not easily implemented and will take several management life-cycles to become accepted in the corporate world. Christensen's books will not appeal to everyone and even a great business book has a limited life span, therefore fresh approaches describing the same theories will be needed every year or so to spread the message. Nevertheless, the message is a valid one and does need to be conveyed to the business community.

Innovation vs Risk Aversion

An interesting Square Off in InformationWeek pits Mike Cuddy, CIO of Toromont Industries against Stephen Prentice, research analyst at Gartner. Gartner has been chiding IT operations recently, accusing them of managing technology rather than providing services to their organizations. To this end, IT departments have become highly risk averse; shunning innovative technologies that may provide valuable services to their constituents in favor of technologies that are easier and simpler to manage.

Cuddy takes exception to this position. He sees the job of CIO as twofold: keeping existing systems functioning and developing new systems to address current and future demands. The priority falls on the first task; if the CIO can't keep existing systems up and running no one is going to back new projects. Due in part to resource constraints this ends up taking up most of the IT department's time leaving little left over for developing the types of systems that the company may need in the near future. So if the CIO seems resistant to innovative technologies, it's simply a matter of priorities, not of preference.

Prentice sees the lack of innovation as a cultural rather than situational. IT departments have become risk averse because they lack imagination and are simply adopting tried and true solutions. There is no doubt that there has been a high failure rate in delivering IT solutions leading to this state. Executive management has been addressing this situation by circumventing the IT department and enabling business unit managers to conduct their own IT projects.

If indeed the IT departments have become obstacles to innovation, what's the harm in enabling the business unit managers to implement their own solutions? In the bad old days, IT had to be centralized because of its expense and complexity; only specialized experts could be expected to get these systems implemented. But with the growth of outsourcing and software delivery systems such as SaaS, and the increased familiarity non-specialized business managers have with IT systems, implementation is no longer a black art.

IT departments may be seeing flat or decreased budgets as a result of projects migrating to business units which is cause for concern; they are losing influence and control within their companies. There has been and will continue to be a struggle between IT and the business units for control of these projects. But the goal is to deliver the needed business services to the end user and if that is better done by enabling the business unit manager to implement an innovative solution then the IT department must adapt and work to make this possible.