Of all the professionals we speak to across all the different industries, the one industry that we have found to be the most reluctant to the idea of Innovation Management is the services industry. And the reason is simple, if not obvious. They are so busy focusing on their customer(s) that they forget, or have no time left over to, focus on themselves.
In other words, they are so busy working “in” their business, that they have no time to work “on” their business.
And while that is completely understandable, there are a few downsides to doing this. The biggest is that it’s almost impossible to craft an “exit strategy.” Whether you plan to sell your business or pass it on to the next generation, if you are instrumental in bringing in revenue, your transition plan will suffer. Which is disappointing, knowing that you’re spending all of your time building something great, but you won’t be able to get the full Return on your Investment when you step away.
The second issue is a related issue. When you don’t spend enough time working on your business, it lacks a cohesive long-term strategy. Again, you may provide your customers with everything they need to successfully plan for the future while leaving yourself open to future market disruptions. Which is scary, when ” 93 percent of executives say they know their industry will be disrupted at some point in the next five years.” (Source: Accenture)
And finally, without periodically stepping back and taking a holistic look at your business practices, you’re putting yourself at risk of losing the pulse of the market. Traditionally, market disruptions come from non-traditional players. Your competitors are often doing what you are doing – asking their customers how they can better serve them. And they receive basically the same answers you receive – which is they need the same basic service with small productivity improvements.
It’s a point that Henry Ford was making when he is quoted as saying “[i]f I asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.” Yet, disruptions often come from outside of your direct competitors. They come from someone with the imagination to think of a better way of providing the value your customer’s need – albeit with additional capabilities that the customer never considered. (For more on this, read Clayton Christensen’s The Innovator’s Dilemma)
Looking for examples?
- BlackBerry was disrupted by a music player.
- GPS devices were disrupted by smart phones.
- Hotels have been disrupted by an online broker offering availability in personal houses.
Strategically Managing Innovation
But there is beginning to be a shift in thinking. Everyone accepts that today they need to be innovative. But until recently, there has been little agreement on what innovation is, how to measure it or how to promote it within your organization. Innovation was something that “I will know it when I see it.” Which, unfortunately, doesn’t scale.
That thinking is what drove us to create the InnoSpecting Framework. To help companies put a plan in place to make innovation repeatable and measureable. It led us to partner with organizations like the International Association of Innovation Professionals (IAOIP) in crafting the International Standard for Innovation Management (ISO 56000) as part of the Technical Committee 279.
And through these partnerships, and hundreds of conversations with crazy smart people around the world, we have taken something that has traditionally not been left to organizations to figure out for themselves – how do I manage to work in and one my business? – is now starting to bring a plan into focus. Because as we have said here before, whether you are ready or not, change is coming.
Because of the IAOIP and Technical Committee 279, there’s now a common lexicon being developed when it comes to Innovation Management. There is agreed upon guidance amongst the international community when it comes to establishing an innovation management system. We are beginning to directly address some of the questions we discussed in our blog post on the biggest challenges to corporate innovation back in early 2018.
By working with us, and valued partners like Ed Riveria with RiveraAdvisors, we are helping accountants and other services-based businesses:
- Consistently capture new ideas from sources internal and external to your organization
- Rate those ideas based on the perceived benefit to your organization.
- Experiment with the highest-rated ideas to PROVE value
- Scale the ideas that have proven their worth and
- Get rid of ideas that are costing you time, money and productivity
If you are interested in learning more, send us an email at info@everevolving.biz to hear about webinars and other training sessions we are currently offering. If you are curious to see how innovative your organization currently is, then take our quiz and find out at http://everevolving.biz/innovation_quiz
