Innovation Engine: Driving Execution for Breakthrough Results

CHAPTER 6

Structuring for Innovation

During the implementation phase, one of the first high-priority tasks necessary for innovation to become an integral part of the organization is to create a vertical and horizontal organizational alignment structure. This structure outlines how each employee can contribute to the organizational vision and mission through innovation. It includes effective change management and control systems to make timely decisions.

How did Microsoft lose the industry innovation edge? What happened at Blockbuster, which once dominated in-home video entertainment? How about Kodak's photography business engine? And what happened at Fiat, Zenith, and Novell? Why do many companies lose their way?

Is it the changing nature of markets? Or is it competition? Some might say it is a firm's inability to exploit and push the technology edge. Others might argue that the problem is the cost of operation or an inability to retain smart people.

You might wonder if there is one primary element that is responsible for such failures.

I think so.

There is plentiful evidence showing how top industry leaders can lose their way just as easily as new entrants can dominate an industry overnight.

Organizational leadership, we tend to assume, is akin to spatial navigation. Either leaders know where to take their company and how to take it there or they don't.

Kurt Eichnawald of Vanity Fair wrote an article in August 2012 titled “Microsoft's Lost Decade.” Around the same time, Greg ...