Is slack in your business an undesirable thing to be eliminated ruthlessly? Or is it something you need to nurture and cherish? The answer to this question will determine how much and what kind of innovation will thrive in your business. I was reminded of this fact recently when speaking with the business leader of a large IT major in the US. It reminded me how waste drives innovation times and and prevents it at other times.
Is Execution Focus Bad for Innovation?
As I was sharing my recent research with him and his business group one thing came out pretty clearly. The entire group was yearning to drive innovation but they seemed to be stymied by the lack of – you guessed it right…resources.
“We really want to drive major innovation but all we keep doing is polishing our boxes to look a little better”, he said early in the discussion. My questioning led him to admit that since the entire division is too execution focused they really don’t have the bandwidth for innovation of a different kind.
His division is so focused on execution that they have absolutely no slack in the division. Although he wants to drive game-changing innovations it is hard for him to step back and do this. As a result, all the focus stays on doing the same things faster, better and cheaper.
Slack and Innovation
What he is really lacking is slack in his organization. If you don’t have slack how do you drive innovation? In my recent innovation research, I found that a few companies allow employees to spend a small part of their time on a personal interest project. This allows them to channel personal creativity and passion of employees towards experimentation. In effect, this is how some companies create slack in a deliberate manner.
At the same time, the current environment is forcing companies to eliminate slack. Due to low top line growth and an ongoing need to deliver quarterly results, companies are being forced to cut slack. And unfortunately, they are also cutting out the ability of their organization to create future innovations.
Nature of Innovation With and Without Slack
It is not that all innovations stop as slack is eliminated. It is just that some types of innovations become harder to come by. Business managers still focus on solving their pressing needs and thus they innovate towards doing more with less – higher productivity. What they cannot do is to step back and see the opportunity landscape in new ways and thus create game changers.
How Waste Drives Innovation
Depending on how you look at organizational slack, your innovation portfolio would differ in a meaningful manner. If you cherish slack, your portfolio may contain major and minor innovations, game reinforcing and game-changing innovations, incremental and radical innovations. But if you ruthlessly eliminate slack, your innovation portfolio will tilt increasingly towards incremental innovations focused on existing markets, existing customers and existing products/ technologies.
Have you looked at your innovation portfolio and wondered why it looks the way it does? Does it explain how waste drives innovation in your business?
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