The Clarion Call : Encouraging Innovation: Pampering the Goose, Summer 2007

Summer 2007 Issue

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Encouraging Innovation:
Pampering the Goose

	Roy Maurer & Charles Andrew, Partners

Innovation is the Golden Egg of business today. Sustainable growth does not come easily in a flattened world of global competition. Failure to keep far enough ahead of the competition can tend to funnel products and services into a stampede of consumer choice, moving ever closer to low-margin commoditization. Differentiation - and growth - is achieved through newness: a unique product feature not available anywhere else, a novel delivery process that cuts time and cost over competitors, an original customer interface experience. Innovation can mean double-digit growth. Innovation is worth its weight in gold. The inner workings of innovative companies are studied and analyzed, much like the magical Goose herself. What's the secret? What do they do and how do they do it? What does their innovation process look like? What can we learn so that innovation can be sustained and perfected here? Ultimately the lessons of fables are about people, about how they think and behave. In this edition, our focus is on those who own the Goose - business leaders, both individually and as a team. They have responsibility for enabling innovation to occur in their organizations - for creating a nurturing environment for the Goose. This requires managing the balance, for instance, between pure creativity and pure analytics. In addition to that, they are called upon to be innovators themselves; they have to be open to serendipity and able to find ways to link it into the business. How to keep the Goose alive? Read on.

Producing the Golden Egg of Innovation

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Too often business innovation is thought of as happening only in R&D or Product Development where the creative types live. Nothing could be further from the truth. Creative thinking is inherent to us all. Scientists invent patentable products; process engineers design differentiating delivery systems; business developers launch disruptive go-to-market strategies. It is the responsibility of senior leadership to enable such innovation throughout their organizations –- to architect the climate where others can be creative – to nurture the Goose so that she can continue to produce Golden Eggs.

But leadership has its own unique domain. Senior leaders own the design and sustenance of the business model itself: the differentiating reason for being, competitive positioning, underlying economic logic, alignment of operations to the external market. Only the leaders have the required breadth and depth of knowledge. But, in a world of rapid change, even business models evolve quickly. Without innovative thinking in the C-Suite – without leaders themselves being innovators – the Goose is cooked.

The Symbiotic Relationship
Innovation and Leadership need each other. Innovation cannot happen without leaders being both innovators in and enablers of the process. And leaders cannot lead for long unless they are bringing different perspectives and making new connections among the pieces of their organizations. The parallel roles of enabler and innovator impact all dimensions of senior leadership responsibility:

As the architects of the environment: building sustainable management processes that create
a climate for innovation.

As a high performing leadership team: being the innovative design team that creates and
sustains a differentiated business model.

As individuals: developing personal competencies, as both enablers and innovators.

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