Why We Fail To Innovate

• We have good intentions.
• We have lofty ideas.
• We have a grand vision.
• We’re excited.
• We excited everyone around us.
• We plan. We prepare.
• We execute.
• Utter #FAIL

What happened? Why did we #FAIL?

You think: Simple, you failed to properly explain and get all the necessary parties to actually understand what innovation completely entailed.

Well no, not necessarily…you see – it’s not as simple as that.

Most likely, you were speaking at their listening.

What do you mean? Speaking at their listening?

People are only able to understand what they themselves can articulate. How could they understand you, if they can’t articulate – comprehend – the words coming out of your mouth? Hence, speaking at their listening.

How Do We Innovate?

Going outside any safe zone is terrifying for any company. When your client or company says they want to be innovative in order to be a healthy 21^st century social enterprise, most likely there’s little to no comprehension of what that entails. Understanding of the complexities involved in achieving the organization’s future vision is absent. There’s no roadmap, let alone a foundation laid, for success.

It’s critically important that you take a step back and look at the cause of the failure to innovate.

You must understand that innovation is more than an activity – it is a capability or system that needs resources, funding and persistence. In order to build it into our company’s future, we then go back to drawing board, review the strategy (most likely we throw it out) and decide to look the organization from the top down – and quickly realize we need to rebuild it from the ground up. When we really begin to look at what’s holding the company back, we’ll most like find ourselves at foundations of our business. Your business systems are complex; in order to interweave innovation, you must understand dynamic complexity, not just detail complexity. Complex isn’t synonymous with complicated.

By looking at what your company or client wants to achieve, why they want to achieve it and what it’s going to take to get there, we’ll realize we must rid of ourselves and our colleagues/clients of their silo mentality and promote the opening sharing information. We then come to find a safe zone for the key stakeholders, begin to push boundaries of their thinking, careful not overwhelm, and begin to show what innovation looks like.

Innovation is when someone creates something that fulfills an unarticulated need (for people or groups of people). As an individual, when you’re innovative, you’re different, you have different points of view, marching to the beat of your own drummer and doing things in ways no one else is. And marching down that path can be lonely and unclear. – Macala Wright

Innovation requires huge mental shifts. So you must also understand – and acknowledge – innovation must become a priority with your organization and you must integrate it into your business priorities This directly corresponds to having fluid processes for information exchange, education, collaboration and transparency built into the company’s operating model with both its internal and external parties. It’s the only way you’ll be able to achieve your organizational goals.

Remember, the path to sustainability and continual, long-term growth isn’t smooth. But traveling it is required as it’s the way only to INNOVATE.