How can you make your company the most innovative in the world? Is it even possible? Can your company become more innovative than the ones you admire most? No matter who you are, what industry you are in, whatever potential disruptors may be out there, with the right actions you can transform your company to become the most innovative company on the planet.
But it won’t be easy, and it won’t happen overnight. This is why you should immediately stop using the “quick fix” innovation offerings you read about or are being sold. They never work.
Creating the most innovative company in the world is not about implementing innovation programs. It is about large-scale cultural changes that transform your entire workforce into an innovation engine. It is about an entire organization learning to innovate, not just a handful of folks sequestered in an innovation department or external agency.
Whether you are a large or a small company. Whether you are part of the “new” or the “old” economy. Whether you are a disruptor or getting disrupted, there are some things you need to do--and many things you need to stop doing--to create the most innovative company in the world.
Here are the first few steps to get started. (and while all of these steps are necessary, they are not a complete innovation solution.)
Step One: Develop your innovation approach
Becoming the most innovative company in the world has to start with your leadership’s willingness to make the right moves (that often involve broad changes) as innovation is the cumulative effect of many decisions. The first step is developing your own unique approach for innovation that is best for you and no one else. Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Toyota--considered by many to be the most innovative company in the world at a certain point in time—each did it their way. Each organization developed a unique approach that worked for them and fit their culture.
Amazon’s approach centers around customer obsession, working backwards, and a few other well documented tenets. Apple is famous for their innovation through design approach. Toyota’s approach historically had been around continual process improvement and kaizen. These approaches work for them, they may not work for you.
Many companies try and copy what Apple or Amazon or Google do. That’s not likely to work. You need to develop the approach that works for your company. If you are unable to do that, innovation will always be a shot in the dark: it may happen, but it’s not likely.
Step Two: Build societal value
You need to be clear what innovation means to you because it means something different to everyone. The definition that I recommend (adapted from the United States Patent and Trademark Office) is: “Innovation is a series of steps that begins with human imagination and creativity and results in the creation of something of value for society to enjoy.”
If you are creating something new that enhances societal value, you are innovating. So naturally the first step towards creating the most innovative company in the world is a singular focus on creating offerings that create value and improve your customers' experiences.
For innovation to thrive, you need to forget about the buzzwords we live by such as monetization, addressable market size, creating moats, synergies with core offerings, or other similar terms.
Instead, ask yourself these fundamental questions: are you truly enhancing value for a user? Are you creating something that would make your life or the lives of your loved ones better?
If yes, proceed. If no, return to the drawing board.
While making money from ideas is important, for real innovation to happen the focus has to be on the creation of customer value. You have to believe that if you create value for society, society will find a way to reward you. The business landscape is filled with companies being very richly rewarded, sometimes in ways they least except, for the creation of societal value.
Step Three: Make innovation everyone’s job
You can’t create the most innovative company in the world by making innovation the job of a few people. Unfortunately, that is what happens in most companies. The average Fortune 500 company has about 50,000 employees. In most companies no more than one to three percent of employees believe innovation is part of their job.
Every employee has the ability to innovate but very often they squander the opportunity, or are afraid to do it, or believe it’s someone else’s job.
Innovation has to be everybody’s job. It does not belong a single person or department. It does not belong to the R&D group or the product development group, nor is it the domain of internal innovation units created to drive innovation. It comes from everywhere. It comes from people who deal with customers every day and know how things can be improved. It comes from people who build and sell products, or folks who simply think of an unusual way to do things.
The most innovative companies in the world extract and pursue the best ideas from the entire organization. If you are not doing that, you are doing yourself a disservice.
There are so many activities involved in getting a great new product to customers that everyone has an opportunity to do something innovative in the process. If you are not working on a product, you can still be innovative in sales, partnerships, marketing, distribution, packaging, or anything else.
The packaging of the iPhone (the box it comes in) is an innovation that is patented. The box is not treated simply as something that will be opened and discarded; it is the first interaction a customer has with the product. For Apple, the box is an important part of the experience that sets the tone for how the customer perceives the product.
When is the last time you’ve thought of the packaging group of a company as an innovation driver? This only happens within a culture where innovation is part of what everyone does.
Step Four: Understand that you can’t outsource innovation
Just about every innovation consultant will sell you their solution to innovation. It could be engaging in innovation sprints, bringing in design thinking or Lean techniques. It could be building an internal or external innovation center, or deploying a software platform, or simply acquiring promising startups. The simple truth is that if there was a single solution that worked, we would all be using it by now. Think of the most innovative companies in the world: which of these techniques do you associate with their successes? None.
Every company that you admire has created an environment where innovation thrives and happens all the time. It is never driven by software or consultants or the deployment of popular methods. It is always driven by a culture that makes innovation part of a company’s everyday fabric.
To make your company the most innovative in the world, forget one-off techniques. Focus on building an approach where every employee is empowered to contribute ideas and improve things wherever they can. Innovation happens when thousands of people make small (or large) improvements and bring new thinking. It never happens when you try to implement a program to harness it.
Conclusion: This is simply the start
The few things I have highlighted in this article are initial steps. In order to create the most innovative company in the world, there are many more things you need to do that I will cover in subsequent articles.
The key thing to remember is that innovation has to be something that you do internally, and learn to do well. Only a few companies have consistently released world-changing innovation consistently. Every one of them has built the right environment that lets innovation thrive. That should be your sole focus if you want to become the most innovative company in the world.
