“Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have …. It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, how your led, and how much you ‘get it’ ” (Steven Jobs, 1981).
People are at the heart of any creative enterprise. If we are going to be truly innovative, we have to believe that our people at every level of the company have the ability to identify and then fix complex problems. Extraordinary things can be achieved when we harness a group of people with differing skills, disciplines, cultures and perspectives.
Innovation is not about the lone inventor. Rather, it’s about teams of enthusiastic (and often overlooked) people who combine energy and creative insight to design and carry forward new concepts. Success comes from people working together in “high performance” teams. So if we want to turn our firm into an innovative leader, then we must invest our time, knowledge and resources into developing and empowering our people. More than anything else they are our biggest asset, assets that can’t be seen on financial statements and reports. Breakthrough innovation is found between people’s ears. Innovation gives competitive advantage like nothing else can.
“There is no other source of competitive advantage! Others can copy our investment, technology and scale – - but NOT the quality of our people” (Managing Director, British Chrome and Steel).
Management studies have repeatedly shown that companies who have a track record of investing in their employees and developing the kind of organizational systems and support in which those people can utilize their creativity have performed demonstrably better than the average business. For example, by pouring heart and soul into his human assets and allies, Sam Walton built the little retailer Walmart into a world-class giant. This may not seem obvious to everyone, but business success is as simple as that.
Investing in our best assets means people continually become a higher priority. Training is thought of as critical and gets linked to business plans. Team structures are developed. Team leaders are formally trained. Employees are taught to work in teams in a structured way. Training in innovation can make a huge difference.
It is tempting to view labor as a cost to be minimized. Let’s be very clear: an effective engaged workforce is the one component of innovation that competitors cannot imitate or reengineer. People management, or what we would we call leadership, is a better predictor of company performance than strategy, high-quality technology, or money spent on R&D. Greater staff involvement, satisfaction, and commitment escalate productivity and ultimately financial performance. Further, patterns of corporate wide “high involvement” can be guaranteed to continuously spread throughout our business. We need our staff fully engaged if we are to overcome the difficulties of innovation required to stay competitive.