As a rule of thumb, most corporate innovation starts out with a bang and then dies quicker than the latest business fad. Why? One reason is that people find it easier to put forward ideas they already have than to go to the critical work of coming up with new ones. “Thinking is hard – - that’s why so few people do it” Henry Ford is reputed to have said.
A second reason is that not enough commitment is given by senior management to make the initiative work: “damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!” Without real leadership, very little of anything goes anywhere.
Third, innovation happens too often on an ad hoc basis rather than as a business process. Periodically, serendipity and good luck produce surprisingly good results. However, these one-hit wonders – - because of their very success and monetary reward – - only set the company up to fail later. Random success cannot be duplicated. When the one-hit wonder dies of old age, the infrastructure to support it becomes a very heavy burden that too often sinks the company.
Sustainable innovation that can drive the business forward needs to be set up as a system (in which skill, expertise and knowledge are deeply embedded into the enterprise). Without such a system the output will be sporadic at best. Learning will turn out to be negligible, execution will be mediocre and results anemic.
Further, without an in-place system (including well-structured, highly-committed innovation teams) employees will constantly face capacity, time and motivation issues around their participation. Such ad hoc innovation will usually lead to continuous power struggles for needed resources.