In terms of street pressure, companies have become too near-term-focused and reactive due to quarter-to-quarter financial pressure from Wall Street. Breakthrough innovation requires someone or some group to dream, create a vision of what’s possible, and possess the willingness to do whatever it takes to make that dream a reality.
Sanjay Singh is the associate vice president, Consumer Hitech at HCL Technologies.
Manufacturing CEOs want breakthrough ideas and innovations that will enable their companies to create differentiated market positions. But conventional ideas and organizational approaches to innovation are holding many of them back. One solution is to embrace “creative destruction.”
In the manufacturing industry, and beyond, it is well known that both CEOs and CTOs are simply not destructive enough. This may be shocking to some, but just look at the industrial landscape today and I think we can all agree that most innovation today is incremental at best.
In fact, high-impact ideas still elude most large corporations with most stemming from start-ups or innovation labs. Taking a closer look, most of the developments over the past decade have come from NASA’s space program, nuclear science and energy, wireless technology, Ethernet, computing, medical science and vaccines, to name just some of the most prominent achievements.
Impediments to Innovation
So how why have we come up short on developing truly breakthrough ideas and innovations and what will it take to encourage a 21st century break through?
First, there are number of business dynamics that are creating impediments to high-impact innovation such as street pressure and stagnant management philosophies.
In terms of street pressure, companies have become too near-term-focused and reactive due to quarter-to-quarter financial pressure from Wall Street. Breakthrough innovation requires someone or some group to dream, create a vision of what’s possible, and possess the willingness to do whatever it takes to make that dream a reality.
In terms of innovation, having Wall Street breathe down your neck all but eliminates the creative angle necessary for new developments in R&D. Such endeavors demand medium- to long-term funding and focus. Corporations today lack the patience and the will to walk that path; hence, output is mediocre. This is not about levels of research and development spending. It is about the will to create a long-term impact.
A company’s management philosophy can truly unlock or block its human capital. The process used to manage companies and the people in them has changed little over the years. Attempts to move away from command-and-control organizational structures and environments have met with limited success. As a result, the passion of individuals is not being unleashed for breakthrough innovation.
Today, there are many ways to drive incremental value. These include using portals, crowdsourcing techniques, internal contests with employees, and institutional partnerships, to name a few. But it is more important to focus on the strategic side to generate game-changing innovations for the business. The process by which a company can manage both of these innovation approaches can be cross-leveraged, with some variations.
