It is useless to try to bring innovation
into companies that are not themselves innovated
(which are structured on an obsolete mindset).
The innovation currently needed – radical innovation also called disruptive innovation – cannot be born where there is no executive level from the disruptive mindset.
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In order to develop truly innovative products, the executive level must have a highly innovative mentality, otherwise the decisions of the executive level do not allow to develop a real innovation: within a big Company, today
how can a Manager understand
if an idea developed inside of his company is a real innovation,
or if it is a non-disruptive innovation?
That is, how does a person who was born in a non-innovative structure (linked to a “linear”, non-disrupitve innovation) understand if a product is truly innovative?
Or again, upstream of everything, how can C-level choose Managers with a truly innovative mindset – let us remember that the necessary innovation is now disruptive, ie it must be able to develop products completely different from the current ones. So unimaginable to most people.
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A significant example: in Soccer, when we moved from traditional game mode to “zone defense”, what was done?
In a first phase, it was ► the small teams that took advantage of the obsolete mindset of the Incumbents to obtain, with minimal investments, amazing results (see the Dutch national team).
Subsequently ► the big teams, forced to change by the failures obtained, hired the Managers of the successful teams that used the new game method.
That is essentially in that phase of disruptive innovation
1) the Owners of the big teams, despite (a) the best observers had already understood that the new method of play was clearly a winner, and despite (b) they had a financial availability hundreds of times greater than the new teams that were starting to beat them on the field, they held back innovation because they had an obsolete mindset.
2) these Incumbents, once they realized that they had to innovate in order to survive, were able to judge people (to be hired as Manager) only by the results already obtained.
3) the fact is that the development of a new game mode, really disruptive, could be achieved in an environment free from the constraints of traditional decision-making power.
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Going back to the current case of the market, the problem is that successful innovators are not managers (as it was in football), but the owners of Start Up who have won a slice of the business, and would hardly leave their company to go to work for the big players of the market (in which they know they would find a “difficult” environment).
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Today it seems that for the Incumbents there is the only possibility to start external Start-ups. Also in the form of Spin-offs <see How can companies change themselves?>
<see also Why the big companies cannot innovate within them [2]>
<see The great Firms are not able to develop disruptive innovation within them>