October
2002
Innovation Tips
Éfor
thriving on collaborative innovation
=========================================
It is no secret that attempts to make
major changes in many organizations frequently fail. An abrupt overhaul of an
organization too often creates more frustration than value, generating
dissention, annoyance, resentment, and even chaos, rather than enhanced order.
However, structural change may be necessary for the organization to remain
vital and effective.
How, then, ought those organizations make
those necessary and important changes? Jim CollinsÕ recent book, Good to
Great, offers some
clues. He and his team of researchers studied the extraordinarily successful
organizations that effectively transformed themselves from good to great, as
measured by their profitability and capitalized value.
Collins notes that they did not attain
their success through a major overhaul; rather, this success occurred at a more
gradual pace. The innovations that occurred often happened in small doses.
Small successes spawned other success, and change and success motivated more of
the same. The purposeful change occurred like a ÒflywheelÓ of innovation.
Picture a heavy flywheel, 30 feet in
diameter, two feet thick, made of steel, and mounted on an axle. Imagine that
your task is to get that flywheel moving as fast and for as long as possible.
Each time you push, the flywheel moves a bit, then a bit more, each time a bit
faster. Each push gradually increases the momentum until, at a certain point,
the flywheelÕs momentum carries itself. You are pushing no harder than you were
the first time, yet the pushing seems to now easily increase the speed of the
flywheel. The inertia that kept it at rest has been broken; its own momentum
now keeps it turning.
The flywheel is an apt metaphor for what
was happening in the companies that successfully broke through the inertia of
being good companies and achieved the momentum of being great companies. There
were no wrenching revolutions, no overnight metamorphoses, no single, profound
innovations, and no grand master plans. They transformed themselves one small
step, one small innovation at a time. Push by push, turn by turn, they moved
the flywheel of incremental innovation until their momentum generated
sustained, even spectacular, results.
The flywheel of innovation can catch on
in an organization, but getting it moving, overcoming the inertia and
resistance to change, takes time. Yet the time spent
cultivating small, successful innovations anywhere and everywhere in the
organization is well worth the effort, for the flywheel of innovation will roll
on to often spectacular vitality and success.
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