How to not innovate

By 1 min read Innovation

In the guide The intrapreneur

Comic-style illustration of a padlocked suggestion box covered in cobwebs in an office corridor, crumpled paper planes on the floor below, employees walking away

Taken from 10 ways to inhibit innovation, here are 4 trends that what prevents innovation in companies.

We exploit and don’t explore

Our focus on short-term results drives out ideas that take longer to mature.

Our efficiency focus eliminates free time for fresh thinking.

Incentives are geared towards maximizing today’s business and reducing risk.

Most of our resources are devoted to day-to-day business so that few remain for innovative prospects.

Organisation and roles

We do not have a standard process to nurture the development of new ideas.

Innovation is someone else’s job and not part of everyone’s responsibilities.

Managers are not trained to be innovation leaders.

Mindset

Managers immediately look for flaws in new ideas rather than tease out their potential.

Innovation is someone else’s job and not part of everyone’s responsibilities.

We look at opportunities through internal lenses rather than starting with customers’ needs and problems.

Fear of cannibalizing current business – Kodak failure is a great example of this, where the film business was so lucrative that they didn’t want to launch other products that will compete with it.

Franck Debane helps large companies build new ventures with Forward Partners: about a hundred programmes in more than 50 companies since 2012. He wrote Passez en mode startup (Eyrolles, 2021) and organises the Lead Innovation Day.