Transforming Legacy Organizations

CHAPTER 9THE EXTRA BLADE ON THE RAZOR: OPTIMIZING INNOVATION

Model 3 Overview of the three innovation tracks

Source: Kris Østergaard

‘To optimize’ is defined in Webster's Dictionary as doing something as perfectly, effectively, or functionally as possible.² A successful company is a world champion in optimizing innovation. That's what most of its employees spend most of their time doing, and that's smart because that's what pays the rent and puts food on the table.

As an established organization with a certain history, optimizing innovation hasn't always been the company's focus. At one point in time, the company probably entered the market with a radically new product or a new business model that identified a gap in the market, or they succeeded because their product or business model created an unprecedented amount of value. They then built on this success, and they've worked hard to scale up and optimize through constant focus on optimization of the service, processes, and production methods. If a company is successful, this is a natural development process to undergo. They create innovations, and then they use their energy to continuously optimize them.

The challenge arises the moment that optimizations begin to create less and less value. The moment when you have metaphorically reached the razor's fifth blade and announce this year's innovation as ‘now not just with ...