Last night Manchester Knowledge Capital hosted an event at Innospace on innovation – the presenter was Michael Cusumano from MIT. Michael presented the six enduring features of innovation – all of which can be found in his latest book, Staying Power. The talk was interesting, engaging and stemmed from many years of research into some of the most innovative businesses of our time. There are lessons to be learnt for businesses of all sizes about how you can focus on innovation as a core business activity – be flexible and think about scope, services and platforms of interlinked thought leadership and broad marketplace activity (i.e. not just products).
Michael was joined by a panel of experts towards the end of the session. The conversation kept coming back to VCs and Business Angels… How can you get investment? As Michael pointed out, there is a real risk that heavy financing of a business can become the kiss of death. Once the very real motivation of selling something so that you don’t go bust is removed, what pushes business owners on? Sometimes it’s not having any money that forces innovation to take place. If you don’t have the money for a big marketing campaign, you innovate and think of cheaper ways of getting your message to your audience. A lack of funds for an all-singing, all-dancing web solution? You borrow ideas, use open-source and build only what you need to. Bootstrapping can often lead to much more innovation than a big pot of cash.
Of course there are many exceptions where only heavy investment will enable an innovation to get off the ground – bio tech, for example. But in other cases it’s the lack of money (and the motivation it brings) that makes everyday innovation a necessity.
Innovation is not just about inventing stuff, it’s about big (and sometimes little) ideas and just putting them into action whatever way you can.
Hi, I agree that innovation is about working with what you’ve got to make stuff happen. I also think that this modern tech rich world is allowing us to work more collaboratively such that innovation is also extending to business relationships to reach a desired end.
Adrian
Your post has me thinking on innovation in a number of ways.
First, it was your very last comment that really captures the distinction between innovative companies/people and others that simply dream big: that is, innovation is the capacity for both novel ideation and execution. Execution without novel thinking just aspires to become operationally excellent; novel thinking without execution often stops with just dreaming out loud.
Second, so often I see companies become nostalgic for ‘the good old days’ when everything was simpler but seemed impossible, with necessity driving the innovations that led to early success. This ‘back to the garage’ mentality (as in HP’s effort to recapture the founders’ experience) is admirable, but misses the opportunity to leverage the benefits of size and experience.
I’m with Adrian in his comments on leveraging new technologies that enable collaboration and with it foster innovation. Just look at our little nascent blogging community, the connections and the springboard it provides to our own innovations.
So glad to see your post!
I work within the social media customer service space and there’s no doubt that social media has made a huge impact on how customer service is provided. But what this post has just made me think about is the difference between the concepts of change and innovation. In both instances, change results, but not every change is innovative.
Social media has fundamentally changed the traditional customer service paradigm. It has opened up what was traditionally a closed one-to-one transaction and made it publicly available to all. Anyone who can be bothered can now take an active (or passive) role in someone else’s query or complaint.
The adoption of Twitter by an increasing number of companies within this space to provide a more immediate and transparent communication/feedback channel is truly innovative.
Couldn’t agree more Marc. Too many companies hark back to so-called easier times and risk missing the opportunities to innovate that today has on offer. It might be a very competitive world but that can often present more chances to get ahead of the crowd. Thanks for the comments!
All the best,
Madeleine