Transforming Legacy Organizations

CHAPTER 1FROM INNOVATION THEATRE TO INNOVATION CULTURE

Have you ever heard of a management team that goes to Silicon Valley to observe the natives in their natural habitats and decode their success strategies? Or maybe you've heard of big organizations that have invited a number of students to a hackathon, where they were going to disrupt the core product over the course of 24 hours, with the help of a large amount of (probably bad) data, pizzas, coffee, and Red Bull. Perhaps you have even encountered companies that have invested in an accelerator programme where they follow a group of startups over a few months in the hope of reaching the achievements that the core organization itself struggles with. There is nothing wrong as such with the aforesaid initiatives, even though I am describing them with some irony. I use these initiatives myself, and I sometimes find them to be extremely valuable. However, there is a great risk that the initiatives do not create the value that organizations want and need. And there is a great risk that they give organizations a false sense of security. For far too often, experience expeditions, hackathons, and accelerator programmes end up being singular events that do not materialize into anything of real value. They end up becoming innovation theatre rather than creating innovation culture. The companies’ innovation efforts wind up not being ambitious enough, and management does not incorporate the initiatives in their corporate strategies ...