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| CHALLENGE THE STATUS QUO FOR INNOVATION Photo CreditDabra Larson |
Business is a Two Way Street, Either Innovate or Perish
Any business organization is a
highly complex system that is comparable to advanced machinery. Like a machine
it has multiple components, interacts with the environment in which it
operates, needs to be operated by skilled people, exists for a specific purpose
and consists of intertwined internal processes culminating into intricate
input-output cycles. It must be observed here that any machine needs to be
upgraded to an improved version over a period of time. This is necessitated by
a variety of factors including but not limited to emergence of a better
technology, enhanced ease of operation, wider service objectives, increased
competition, changes in the user tastes & preferences, etc. This
up-gradation is necessary for the machine to remain relevant to the users it is
designed to serve or there is a clearly defined path to oblivion by being
labelled as obsolete. And the business world is no different, as we have
numerous examples of huge businesses with highly successful product categories
which were doing very well at one point in time but they failed to adapt
themselves to the dynamic environmental changes over a period of time. Today
these businesses stand relegated to the annals of business history as their
glory has diminished with time.
“One Best
Way” Becomes Ineffective with Onslaught of Time
The businesses must take a cue
from this point that if they have been successful during the past years or
decades the credit goes to their struggle which led to the winning innovation responsible
for their success during their start-up phase, where they could come out with an
effective strategy which worked very well for them in addressing the specific
set of environmental forces prevailing at that point in time. As the time
passes by, changes happen in the market, competition, technology, customer
preferences, etc, which render the erstwhile success strategy redundant, it
ceases to add any value in the changed circumstances, on the contrary it gets
in the way of the progress of the business, because the executive team is overtly
obsessed by the "one best way" of doing the things as that had
always worked in the past. The real problem is the obsession of the executive
team with the "one best way" of doing things. But they miss
out on re-validating their set of assumptions which were deeply embedded into
the development of that "one best way". The “one best way” which earlier worked for
the business loses its relevance in the context of the changing business
realities where the earlier assumptions do not hold any ground, as these
assumptions need to be questioned on a continuous basis to successfully address
the challenges posed by the dynamic environmental uncertainties.
Businesses Must Innovate to Safeguard against Extinction
As there is a continuous need to
carry out maintenance of a machine, similarly an organization must also be
continuously monitored for any ailing divisions that may be requiring surgery
or some other treatment. The emphasis must be laid on innovation, as the
executive team needs to conduct in depth research to decipher the prevailing
business trends and generate improved solutions to create value for their
business organization. A very critical point
to be noted here is the concept of preventive maintenance, where the catch is
to proactively maintain the machine through continuous inspection and
ensuring that the machine is kept in an efficient working state by carrying out
proactive repairs before any actual work loss or breakdown occurs. Here if any complacency
sets into the approach chosen by the executive team of the business
organization, it necessarily overlooks the highly critical innovation through preventive
maintenance resulting in guaranteed inefficiencies in conducting its business leading
towards the impending organizational failure. As compared to the proactive
preventive maintenance adopted for up-keeping the machines, the business
organizations must also prevent the organizational break down by converting the
challenges faced by them into opportunities through proactive preventive
maintenance leading towards effective innovation. If the proactive preventive
maintenance is not adopted by the business organizations then sooner or later
an epidemic or a catastrophe hits them, putting them in a distressful
situation, where getting into the fire-fighting mode is the only option left
with them. In such a state of distress, it is quite natural for the business
organization to shift its complete focus & energy from its core business
objectives towards the fight against extinction, but with little chances of
survival.
Innovative Mind Set: Key to Business Survival
Innovation is not necessarily a paradigm shift bringing about business disruption as it may come in multiple forms. For a marketing division it may be an act of
identifying new uses its products can serve with an entirely untouched market
segment, for the production team it may be an equivalent of a more efficient
production process capable of delivering better quality in lesser time &
cost, for a chip design organization it may be introduction of a more compact
sophisticated design capable of delivering better value, reliability &
speed as compared to the previous versions, etc. So a progressive organization needs
to continuously challenge the status quo. Its executive team must be
intelligently obsessed with the idea of innovation by identifying
organizational challenges and converting them into opportunities. This
innovative approach needs to be an organization wide culture for an exponential
impact on the overall functioning and well being of the organization under
consideration. It is a very widely known fact that the organizations which were
considered very successful for a series of decades eventually became obsolete
because they could not adapt themselves to their changing realities. The real
challenge for the progressive businesses lies in continuously reinventing
themselves through an innovative mindset to ensure that they remain relevant to
the changing business landscape by re-validating their assumptions and
redefining their new set of values, beliefs & assumptions on which their
complete organizational competencies, strategies, effectiveness, success and
long term survival are based.
