The Two Biggest Barriers To Innovation
August 24, 2008
According to a recent BCG study, the two biggest barriers to innovation are:
1. Risk adverse culture and
2. Overly lengthy development times. Most executives thought that they did a poor job moving from idea generation to initial sales quickly enough.
But what should the astute innovation manager do to increase speed-to-market?
a. Use Speed Thinking - this can help everyone involved in the innovation process to think and act faster and better. Our process of ‘Start, Build, Evaluate and Do’ is ideal at any stage of the innovation process.
b. Fast-track the most important priorities. Not all innovation is the same. Some projects have bigger potential impact than others and should be given the green light.
c. Adopt a ‘Test’ mindset. The aim of innovation is to test new initiatives in the market as quickly and cheaply as possible. By doing so, you will learn what works at a faster pace than your competitors thus giving you an advantage. Paradoxically to succeed you need to fail faster!
d. Measure you speed to market and try and benchmark it against organisations outside your industry. I would select the software industry for example. This industry is built on speed so there are many lessons to be learned for slower moving organisations.
Ken Hudson
How fast is your business?
May 22, 2008
All managers and leaders constantly talk about how speed to market is one of their most important drivers of success. They typically lament the delays in important projects. Yet when i ask them what is causing thes delays and what they are doing about them so that they don’t happen again they seem to collectively shrug their shoulders.
Why do smart people accept the status quo? Why complain about these seemingly endless blockages but not really want to get to the bottom of them. Perhaps leaders in large companies simply accept that because of size that is the way it has to be.
At The Speed Thinking Zone we are trying a different approach. We are working with Tribe Research and are trying to develop a Speed-t- Market benchmark which employees and managers can complete which will highlight the speed bumps in any organisation. Ideally we can (in the future) compare and contrast similar size organisations and so that we can draw attention to potential problem areas and then develop a plan to address these.
If you would like to be part of this benchmark, please send me an email. We will bring you the initial results soon.
Ken Hudson