Innovation – Is It Just Another “Shiny Thing?”

There'll be Another Soon

Innovation has a head of steam.  It’s in all the business publications and on every CEO’s lips.  It’s today’s silver bullet.  It’s the key to growth, sustainability, and employee engagement.  But is Innovation here to stay or is it just another “shinny thing?”

I can make the case on either side of the question; however, recently I’ve had my faith restored in Innovation becoming deeply embedded in the science and practice of management.  My encouragement comes from the Management Innovation Exchange web site where it lists finalists in this year’s Innovation contest.  Two of the entries come from clients and friends.

Whirlpool Corporation

The first comes from Moises Norena the Global Director of Innovation at Whirlpool Corporations.  He writes about: Whirlpool’s Innovation Journey: An On-Going Quest for a Rock-Solid and Inescapable Innovation Capability.  The full story is at: Whirlpool's Innovation Journey.

For me the significant part of Moises’ story is that it starts in 1999.  As he says, the Innovation journey can be long but it has big rewards.  I was involved in the early chapters when Gary Hamel started Whirlpool down the Innovation path.  He and his team at Strategos used their tools to begin building the Innovation capability within the corporation.

My role in the early 2000’s was to lead the team that focused on Customer Loyalty.  We used our global customer research as the primary input into understanding Customer Insights and Discontinuities in the appliance market.  We then used the Innovation tools to frame and implement innovations that would capture the articulated and unarticulated needs of Whirlpool’s customers.

From these green-shoots Moises weaves an interesting tale of the constant adjustment Whirlpool makes to the expectations and theories about embedding Innovation.  I’m not sure if Moises agrees, but my major take away from his work is that: Innovation can’t be embedded; it can only be a capability that evolves to meet the business needs of the day.

Korea Telecom

The second article is from Misook Lim the Director of the Innovation Management Center at Korea Telecom.  Her story is about Transforming Culture Through Pervasive Innovation.  It can be found at: Korea Telecom - Innovation Changes Culture.

I worked with Misook and her team for about 26 months.  Again the connection was through Gary Hamel and this allowed us to draw on the Whirlpool experience through the generous support of people like Moises and his boss Nancy Tennant who has been named by Business Week as one of the world’s 25 Innovation Champions.

Misook does a wonderful job of relating the multiple fronts that had to be pursued to have Innovation recognized as a needed tool to position Korea Telecom for the aggressive changes taking place in its market.  She walks us through a series of initiative such as: building capability in a core team; leading Innovation challenges within business units; setting the governance structure; and developing the companies executive team and vice presidents.

For me the Korea Telecom experience re-proved something we all know: culture is a major issue when implementing change.  I learned that you have to understand culture and respect it as a starting point for change.  The culture at Korea Telecom was hierarchical and deferential; sometimes our western beliefs about equality and participation had to wait.

Often in the Innovation consulting business we’re asked for proof, best practices, and where this has been done before.  Moises and Misook answer the question.

Employee Engagement->Innovation->Customer Loyalty: Case Study

Leverage Innovation

Organization transformation is a business full of: principles, tools, models, approaches, frameworks and perspectives.  It’s a mind-boggling and mind-numbing stew of overlapping and contradictory ideologies.  Just defining a word like “innovation” will call forth passionate debate.

When I get tossed in these storms of righteousness I struggle back to a few “truisms” that I’ve learned along the way, like:

… nothing happens in organization transformation unless the executive team is “open and trusting.”  If you can’t fix this problem then you can’t fix the organization!

I discovered another truism when I spent 26 months in Korea working the transformation of a 30,000-employee public company.  A decade ago I came to the understanding that organizational change had to be driven from the outside-in.  Successful change is customer driven change.

As I worked with this idea of “customer driven change” I found collateral benefits.  I found that when employees leverage customers, the employees become engaged in their organizations.  A short line of sight between employees and their customers not only generates effective change, but it does it by solving the biggest malaise in organization’s today – the disengagement of employees.

So it became clear to me that organizational transformation should be based in engaging employees to solve customer issues.  Trite, but true!

My practical problem was that HR programs aimed at solving employee engagement didn’t always solve customer issues; and marketing programs aimed at customer loyalty didn’t always engage employees.  A link was missing.

Then in mid-2010 we got a request from the CEO of Korea Telecom to help him engage his people to change the organization.  KT’s market was shifting, yet the employees tended to abide by traditional hierarchical and deferential rules.  How could we connect employees to their changing customer base?  The answer was “innovation.”

Innovation has some glorious characteristics that go beyond the customary Employee Engagement and Customer Loyalty programs.

1. Innovation needs to be framed within the context of a “customer value proposition,”
2. Innovation draws on the energy and passion derived from creativity which is innate in all humans, irrespective of culture, and
3. Innovation has a discipline that leads to commercialization.

Thus another truism: organization transformation is based on the virtuous value chain of:

Employee Engagement->Innovation->Customer Loyalty

This understanding was fundamental to our success in Korea – and that success has been documented in the public domain.  Here are two references.

The first reference is a case study at the London Business School.  The study was prepared about a year and a half into our 26-month engagement.  The connection to LBS was through Gary Hamel who led our project.  The case study has a strategic focus on the large issues of transformation.

 KT-Transforming to an Agile Organization

The second reference is written by my client and best friend in Korea, Misook Lim who now heads the Innovative Management Center at Korea Telecom.  Misook has just published this article.  It comes about a year after the first reference.  This article focuses on the practical working level and implementation of the strategic context provided in the first reference.

Pervasive Innovation at KT

I’m not a fan of the common wisdom that: “70% of change efforts fail.”  The virtuous value chain and the dedication of my Korean colleagues have proven it wrong.

Can You Find Me Now?

I've been fortunate enough to be on a transformation project with South Korea's primary teleco, KT (Korean Telecom). They introduced the i-phone to the Korean market and they were kind enough to give us phones for the duration of our stay - phase I ends in mid-June.

Both of my colleagues have been i-phone enthusiasts in their home towns of San Jose and Amsterdam. This is the first time for me and I have to admit to its ease and usefulness of Apps. But I wonder what all of this is doing to the way we work and think. Yes, it changes your life, but what are we losing?

Here's my specific example. On day one our client met us at the hotel. The KT office is about five miles away and although Seoul is a sprawling metropolis of about 11,000,000 people, the drive to the office is not complicated. You turn right out of the hotel for half a block, right again for a long block, and then right onto Tehran. Go five miles and its the big blue building on the right. Easy, right? No!

We have i-phones with Google maps, text messaging, voice recordings and even a phone. Why use the physical world and the recognition features that humans have used for thousands of years to survive when you can use technology.

Day two we were on our own. We jumped into the cab and showed the driver the directions that our client had given us. The driver didn't understand. Panicing, we texted our client who emailed a new set of clearer directions - in Korean! The cabbie still didn't understand. We called our client who spoke to the cabbie. We finally got to work.

The next day was the same confused scene, but this time we couldn't connect with our client. I made the suggestion that we just turn right, right, and right. My colleagues that I was nuts. Why would we do that when we had our i-phones. Finally our client called and we rolled out of the hotel entrance.

Day four had all of the characteristics of the previous days, but this time technology saved us. We had been smart enough to record the directions from our client on our i-phones. Out we went into the world, but the driver still didn't understand. By the time we crossed over Tehran street there were three screaming passengers and three i-phone map Apps in the drivers face.

By the time we got to day five I convinced my colleagues that we just might be able to get to work the "good old way." It worked beautifully. Since then things have been fine.

I love technology. It has its place. But it can erode our survival skills. I suspect that children have already lost directional skills. They put their faith in GPS. It's a different world with a different way of thinking; but I'm not quite ready to give up my internal compass.