Innovate for Vision and Value

This manual by innovation experts Curtis R. Carlson and William W. Wilmot proves valuable for its focus and rigor. Many books on innovation discuss only idea generation. This one concentrates on the execution side of innovation. It supports idea creation and development, as well as research funding, but it pays useful attention to executing ideas. The authors methodically walk readers through the practical steps involved in selecting among creative ideas, developing the best ones, gaining support in an organizational context, and using innovation purposefully. The result is an exact, pragmatic, and systematic treatment that will suit those who are looking to innovate or seeking guidance for changing an organization’s culture.

Innovation leads to prosperity and a higher quality of life.Curtis R. Carlson and William W. Wilmot

Carlson, president and CEO of SRI International, and Wilmot, director of the Collaboration Institute, educate readers and persuade them that innovation matters. Much of what they discuss has come to pass – a credit to their prescience – or will happen soon. This makes their explanation of how people misunderstand innovation and what’s involved in innovating methodically all the more impressive.

However, this perceptive book was published in 2006,  so the section focused on the transformative shift to digital technology, globalization and a knowledge-based economy may feel dated. Read it anyway. The authors’ restraint and deep knowledge produce an instruction manual of great articulation and readability. They argue that innovation – rather than being the result of wild, unpredictable inspiration or solitary genius – comes about as the result of following five “core” disciplines.    

Focus on meaningful needs

This is the first discipline of innovation. People can go astray when innovating because they follow an interesting idea down the wrong track. Instead, the authors advise, identify potential projects that meet specific, significant needs. Organizations must share a set of standards that inform the questions they ask when they evaluate an innovation’s possibilities.

When someone comes up with a new idea, ask the person to answer these four questions: need, approach, benefits per costs, and competition and alternatives.Carlson and Wilmot

Here, Carlson and Wilmot shift innovation away from random creativity and toward a blend of creation, self-knowledge and market knowledge. This emphasis on the market and on fulfilling customer needs in ways that create new value for them is one of their foundational themes.

Emphasize creating value

Every job has one function: creating customer value, and that’s the second discipline of innovation. Organizations should innovate with this goal. Those who propose an innovation must develop a “value proposition” to explain how it provides superior value compared to competing alternatives.

Innovation is the process of creating and delivering new customer value in the marketplace.Carlson and Wilmot

Innovators should identify what need the innovation fulfills and explain its “unique approach” and its “benefits per costs.” Then, they must detail how the results of this benefit-versus-cost calculation are better than those of any competing proposals. Once innovators explain their value proposition concretely, their organizations can help them develop the proposition and their innovation.

Enlist “innovation champions”

To carry out this third discipline of innovation, organizations must shift to organizing by function rather than by role or job title. The innovation champion is one result of this shift. Carlson and Wilmot explain that it’s not enough for an innovation to be interesting, good, new, superior, or any other adjective. Someone capable of pursuing it properly must recognize its value and be willing to fight for it.

The best source of information about whether your value proposition is on the right track is your prospective customers and partners.Carlson and Wilmot

Such innovation champions serve as persuasive prophets, explaining the innovation and answering everyone’s questions about it. The champion builds on his or her commitment, gains the support of at least one other effective person, and brings the company along by fighting for budgets and other resources. These champions aren’t trying to be disruptive. They accept the firm’s mission and values and become “organizationally responsible” for innovations that best serve those values.

Organize innovation teams.

The fourth discipline of innovation asserts that companies must organize interdisciplinary teams that follow shared and established rules and practices. These practices include frequent, positive communication, written records of ideas, and praise for innovative group action. Team members need skills in conflict resolution and should turn to facilitators to guide their meetings. They also need mutual goals and the necessary skills to bring those goals to fruition.  Members should share the rewards for their accomplishments. 

Align internally for innovation and value creation.

Carlson and Wilmot teach this lesson repeatedly — most explicitly through the fifth discipline, “organizational alignment.” They address it when they discuss idea generation and argue against having only one part of the company responsible for research and development. They make innovation’s importance clear by directing all innovative efforts toward the goal of creating customer value.

All sections of a company must share the same evaluative criteria and ask the same questions about potential innovations. For example, firms should develop a “Watering Hole,” an interdisciplinary meeting for idea generation. Because these meetings are interdisciplinary, they don’t fit into traditional organizational structures or even development plans. People should move outside their comfort zones by role-playing specific approaches to ideas.

Prosperity is the result of competitiveness and productivity, which are based increasingly on innovation.Carlson and Wilmot

Organizations need trained facilitators to guide these meetings. Facilitators should ask people to think flexibly, sometimes supporting an idea and sometimes opposing it. They should move beyond traditional organizational habits and even their own boundaries to develop ideas more productively. This may sound extreme, but it’s a logical corollary to the early section of the book: If the market or the economy change radically, companies must also change.

Organizations must review themselves and evolve.

Carlson and Wilmot imply this lesson throughout and articulate it in later chapters. They argue that for repeated, ongoing innovation to succeed, innovations must align with a company’s values and mission. Everyone must know those values and mission and agree on how to take action. Here the innovation champion’s persuasive qualities matter most. Innovation champions must fire up people’s desire for change. They have to offer an exciting “new vision” while providing an action plan the workforce actually can implement.  

The portrait of the innovator that emerges here differs from the archetype of the isolated technical genius. In the authors’ model, the innovation champion understands other people’s deeper concerns. Champions must recognize when fear or doubt paralyzes people. Then they need to find the tools to guide those who are afraid or dubious. They must shepherd the entire organization’s culture through change while never implying that the status quo is lacking. The innovation champion needs to bridge technological, human, and social concerns to guide others across this bridge.

Both the tempo of change and the opportunities for innovation will continue to increaseCarlson and Wilmot.

This transformation isn’t short-term or generic: The goal isn’t to get everyone on board for a single project. Instead, the goal is to integrate innovation permanently into the organizational culture. The objective is to make the company into an “innovation enterprise” that practices “Continuous Value Creation” (CVC) in all its activities. This requires understanding and sharing a vision that transforms the company from the top leadership to the frontline. CVC organizations commit to eliminating any work that doesn’t add value.  

Innovation must extend beyond business.

Late in the book, the authors argue that innovation matters in spheres outside of business, including education, the media, and government. They share examples of countries that turned their economies around and become growth havens. While these examples suggest that governments can influence economic functions, this section proves the least convincing. The authors risk devolving into an uncharacteristic editorial outburst about the dangers of government regulation, unfair media, inefficient educational systems, and unions.

Throughout, Carlson and Wilmot write in clear, basic prose. They take care to explain how human nature affects the implementation of their suggestions, and they note that some of their ideas may trigger a slightly irrational response. However, their instructions and their writing style suggest that rationality triumphs overall. The idea that organizations can innovate methodically appears throughout as the authors tell companies how to become more innovative and fulfill both vision and value without losing their sense of order.