10 Signs that you’ve got an innovation dysfunction

It should be pretty easy to walk into an organization and do an innovation audit — that is, assess the likelihood that an organization can do remarkably new and innovative things. Here’s what I would look for:

• People laugh at new ideas
• Someone who identifies a problem is shunned
• Innovation is the privileged practice of a special group
• The phrase, “you can’t do that because we’ve always done it this way” is used for every new idea
• No one can remember the last time anyone did anything really cool
• People think innovation is about R&D
• People have convinced themselves that competing on price is normal
• The organization is focused more on process than success
• There are lots of baby boomers about, and few people younger than 25
• After any type of surprise — product, market, industry or organizational change — everyone sits back and asks, “wow, where did that come from?”

Innovative companies act differently. In these organizations

• Ideas flow freely throughout the organization
• subversion is a virtue
• success and failure are championed
• there are many, many leaders who encourage innovative thinking, rather than managers who run a bureacracy
• there are creative champions throughout the organization — people who thrive on thinking about how to do things differently
• ideas get approval and endorsement
• rather than stating “it can’t be done,” people ask, “how could we do this?”
• people know that in addition to R&D, innovation is also about ideas about to “run the business better, grow the business and transform the business“
• the word “innovation” is found in most job descriptions as a primary area of responsibility, and a percentage of annual renumeration is based upon achievement of explicitly defined innovation goals

The fact is, every organization should be able to develop innovation as a core virtue — if they aren’t, they certainly won’t survive the rapid rate of change that envelopes us today.