Innovation heroes are a sign of a dysfunctional organization
steveblank.substack.com
Innovation heroes are a sign of a dysfunctional organization
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Re: Innovation heroes are a sign of a dysfunctional organization
#2God yes please give us an "innovation doctrine."
This is certainly an interesting article to read about but I'm not sure his suggestions or analysis are that substantive. Complex institutions develop rules to simplify decision making and streamline information flows. They choke otherwise. "Develop an innovation doctrine" isn't really effective advice.
Re: Innovation heroes are a sign of a dysfunctional organization
#3God yes please give us an "innovation doctrine." This is certainly an interesting article to read about but I'm not sure his suggestions or analysis are that substantive. Complex institutions develop rules to simplify decision making and streamline information flows. They choke otherwise. "Develop an innovation doctrine" isn't really effective advice.
There are various articles on developing a culture of innovation, e.g. https://hbr.org/2019/01/the-hard-truth-about-innovative-cult.... Probably some books too. Even ChatGPT probably has decent advice. Management is not technically complex, it just requires putting in the work. But of course it is not easy, e.g. the first advice in the HBR article is to fire incompetent people, whereas the example here was government where firing incompetent people is notoriously hard.
Re: Innovation heroes are a sign of a dysfunctional organization
#4I favor the general point here, but the leading anecdote doesn’t really fit with the lessons learned. A government organization generally does not need an innovation doctrine to avoid being outcompeted because they are a monopoly provider. They maintain that monopoly through force.
If you want to get a government agency to perform better, fix the incentives.
Re: Innovation heroes are a sign of a dysfunctional organization
#5"Innovation Doctrine" sounds like something you put next to your Mission Statement. How about fostering an internal discussion board where employees can pitch ideas and get hooked up with others who know how to implement them? If you need guard rails around the anarchy, then you can tie action items to a ticket tracking system that's readable by the whole company. I can file a bug in JIRA against any product my company makes, why not the company itself?
Re: Innovation heroes are a sign of a dysfunctional organization
#6I favor the general point here, but the leading anecdote doesn’t really fit with the lessons learned. A government organization generally does not need an innovation doctrine to avoid being outcompeted because they are a monopoly provider. They maintain that monopoly through force. If you want to get a government agency to perform better, fix the incentives.
> A government organization generally does not need an innovation doctrine to avoid being outcompeted because they face no meaningful competition
Maybe true for some government organizations, but not true on the whole.
Governments spend billions (and sometimes trillions) on innovation to compete with each other. Collectively, government programs probably account for 99.99% of all "innovation" spending.
And they have the highest stakes when it comes to being "outcompeted".
Re: Innovation heroes are a sign of a dysfunctional organization
#7I could name some companies where you don't need to be an "innovation hero" to feel like the "innovation hero" from the anecdote and "Please ask next quarter" seems to be the motto :)
Re: Innovation heroes are a sign of a dysfunctional organization
#8I favor the general point here, but the leading anecdote doesn’t really fit with the lessons learned. A government organization generally does not need an innovation doctrine to avoid being outcompeted because they are a monopoly provider. They maintain that monopoly through force. If you want to get a government agency to perform better, fix the incentives.
Doesn't the leading anecdote give an example of a (dis)incentive that needs fixing? That it takes 10 months and lots of head-banging and then you get a $100 bonus, that would certainly disincentivise me to do any type of innovation.
Re: Innovation heroes are a sign of a dysfunctional organization
#9"Unhappy the land that has no heroes!" "No. Unhappy the land that needs heroes."
Re: Innovation heroes are a sign of a dysfunctional organization
#10The basic idea here seems pretty sound. I remember years ago critiques about some Microsoft "Heroes" campaign along a similar line. While organizations often have superstars or whatever you want to call them, if you require them to at least minimally function you're probably doing something wrong.
That shouldn't mean that you don't celebrate those superstars. They're not a bad thing certainly--which is probably where I differ with the post a bit. But understand that we shouldn't be depending on them all the time.