Improving Innovation

Concrete steps you can take to achieve more complete innovation in your organization [full post with paid subscription]

The culture pattern we identified in our research around innovation is very common. It’s about valuing the concepts of innovation more than the practices. We love thinking about the future and being creative, but we’re not so good at taking risks or running experiments. As a result, we end up with innovation that doesn’t really go very far (we call it “incomplete innovation”).

This can be a tough problem to fix because it absolutely requires people to start doing things that they are not used to doing. I see it all the time—everyone 100% agrees that we should all be running more experiments and beta testing things with customers or members, but at the end of the day (month, quarter, year) we’re not doing it.

That means you need to design culture plays (action items that will shift the culture) that really force people into a situation where they need to engage in the new activity. In the “man riding an elephant” metaphor from Chip and Dan Heath’s book Switch, this is not about directing the rider, it’s about shaping the path.

Here are some plays to consider: