|
Joyce Wycoff, in her Heads Up on Organizational Innovation blog, points out that although many corporations are claiming they're committed to innovation, only a relative handful appear to be building processes and cultures to support it. And even fewer are inviting all of their employees into the process.
Using the example of Radio Shack, which is closing about 10 percent of its stores, she asks the question: Why not train everyone who is on the front line - in other words, with customer contact - in the ways of innovation? If you accept the definition that innovation is basically about creating new customer value, then this makes sense. So then why do so few companies do it?
"We’re just not convinced that inviting everyone into the innovation process is worth the time, money and effort involved to do it. In the meantime, we pour an enormous amount of money into market researchers, ethnographers and special project teams sending them out to find out what customers really want and what’s new in the world. While professional researchers are highly valuable, given my druthers, I’d rather see 35,000 passionate, trained and capable people exploring for new ways to create value 365 days a year."
I see the same thing in the companies that I read about and talk to. An anointed few - the R&D staff, product managers or innovation managers - are the learn how to set up structures and processes to support innovation. But the vast majority of the organization is left to pursue business as usual. Joyce mentions front-line salespeople, but customer support representatives are another example of employees who have customer contact - in fact, who get to hear a lot of complaints and customer "pain." If they were trained to look beneath the surface of what customers are saying, imagine the payoffs in terms of new product and service ideas, improved business processes and more?
Some companies are now in the process of training their employees on how to innovate. Whirlpool is one example that I heard about at the Innovation Strategies Summit in Chicago earlier this week. Using a "toolkit" supplied by innovation consultancy Strategos, a core team of managers have been trained on how to develop processes and support systems for innovation. And now they've returned to their divisions to train Whirlpool employees there. It's a big commitment and a time-consuming process, but obviously Whirlpool feels it's worth it. They're in a market (white goods - washers, dryers, etc.) that's only experiencing marginal growth (1-2 percent per year), and they strongly believe that giving customers a better experience through distinctive products will pay off. |
