In my previous post about Innovation and the Right People, I wrote about various traits I think are common in people prone to becoming innovators. The great thing is that everyone is born creative, evidenced by curiosity in kids. Through education, upbringing, life experiences, and/or getting a job (where a lot of businesses do not value creativity), most people can lose it overtime. The heart of innovation are people who are curious and can do things. Keeping these people around long enough to do great work should be your goal. If you can do this, innovation will more than likely happen. That is of course if you do not overburden them with people who distract them from what is important – coming up with, and getting to market the next great thing. So what types of people should you not include in the process of innovation?
1) Text book Managers. Managers are important to business, but by design are there to be the “devil’s advocate” and manage risk, which runs opposite of creativity and innovation. With most tried and true managers that I have worked with, they are terrified by natural born innovators and do not know what to do with their energy and vision. Innovators feel stifled and eventually leave as a result. The worst case scenario is that the innovation makes the manager feel inferior or somehow jealous and politicking takes over keeping the customer’s interest in mind. People get fired and the customer in the end loses. That said, oversight is a necessary thing to make sure the innovations make it to market and can be profitable. Who you choose to oversee the innovation process is as important as the people to do the innovation itself. It’s pretty darn important that they appreciate curious/creative people and are innovators themselves. Putting someone in charge of innovation simply because they have an MBA or managed another department successfully (i.e. Customer Service) will more than likely stifle any attempt to innovate and end in mediocrity and frustration.
2) Interns. Sure they are young, but most of them have just received four years of common sense training (i.e. College) that taught them everything but being innovative. They can sometimes bog down the process and should be selected by the innovation team rather than being appointed to them.
3) Pure sales people. Most sales people I know don’t care about innovation; they just want to sell it. That’s a great thing when you have to get your product out there. Isn’t it ironic how some of the best technology sales people can not and do not even use the technology they are selling? In my experience, most pure sales people are really just waiting for you to come up with something they can sell. For this reason, keep them involved only if required to engage customers and when you are about to get a beta version out for customer testing. Also, if your innovation is proprietary in any way, the more people that know about it the more likely information is going to get leaked. “Loose lips can sink ships.”
4) Experts. Innovation does not happen by asking customers what they want; it happens by observing their frustrations and giving them something they did not know they did know they needed. Experts are generally not open to new things and have deeply formed opinions about the way things should be, leaving little room for new ideas. Keep them at bay at all cost.
5) Shmoozers, socialites and politicians. These people can come in many varieties (e.g. engineer, sales, managers, etc.) and some are people that can do things. They may kill (or try to kill) anything that does not benefit them personally or might jeopardize their reputation; they are usually wimps when it comes to pushing the envelope and can become jealous very easily. It’s best to keep them out of innovation all together.
6) Accountants and Financiers: Though very important to managing business, companies ruled by accountants and financiers where “budget is king” usually are not innovative. Innovation happens because. That’s right, true innovators are not stopped by budgets, they do it anyway and can not help themselves. Keep accountants and financiers informed and involved through the person in charge of innovation, and on an as need basis. Guy Kawasaki covers this in his book Rules for Revolutionaries.
In conclusion, creating a company that can come up with original ideas that add value (creativity) and then get them into the market (innovation) is more than simply setting a priority. As Tom Kelley from Ideo likes to point out, innovation is on the top 10 list of many company’s key annual initiatives, but looses priority as operational matters get in the way. Unless a company has the right kinds of people charged with innovation, it can unfortunately become a distraction. If you want innovation to happen in your organization, I strongly encourage you to start with asking whether or not you have the right people working on it. WARNING: Innovators are hard to turn off and can be rather sneaky if you pull the plug on their project (the will do it after hours until something gets done). They become true believers and don’t take no for an answer. If this is not something you want in your organization, then just outsource innovation, focus on your strengths and stop wasting time.
By Jay Yoo