Be Less Zombie

5How Much Innovation Is Enough?

How to plan innovation resources that deliver a big enough tomorrow.

‘How do I get my people to make innovation the first thing they think about in the morning?’ a frustrated senior executive once asked me.

There are many answers to that question. But ask ‘those people’ and their loudest and most consistent answer will be, ‘Give me time!’ A 60–70-hour week leaves little space, energy and motivation for meaningful innovation.

Despite what we'd like to believe, you can't squeeze innovation around the edges and hope that it works, any more than you can with other business-critical functions in the organisation.

Imagine the bleary-eyed finance director only dedicating a few spare minutes to the end-of-quarter reports once he's put the kids to bed. Yet that's how innovation plays out in many organisations.

Successful innovators are deliberate about strategically resourcing their future. To meet their financial renewal target (e.g. 30% of revenues from products that didn't exist three years ago), they realise that resources need to be adequately deployed against three broad categories of innovation:

Enhancing

• Product: Incrementally improving core products and services.
• Market: Serving and growing the core customer base.
• Organisation: Improving the day-to-day efficiency and effectiveness of the organisation.

Extending

• Product: Piloting promising new products with existing customers.
• Market: Extending into adjacent markets with core and emerging products ...