BCA

From: Center for Creative Leadership, Leading Effectively

“We want to create the iPod of our industry.” Dan Buchner hears that a lot from clients these days. His reply? “Do you have Steve Jobs as your CEO?”

Buchner, an award-winning designer, entrepreneur and innovation consultant with global design firm Continuum, may not always be so blunt. But he’s getting at an essential, but often overlooked, element of successful innovation: leadership.

“If you’re not traditionally an innovative company, you don’t become innovative overnight by bringing someone in for a lecture or a project,” says Dan. “There’s work to be done.”

“In particular, there is leadership work to be done,” adds CCL’s David Horth.

Dan and David have spearheaded a partnership between the two organizations to teach “innovation leadership.” Nearly two years ago they realized that Dan’s “design thinking” model for innovation mapped almost directly to David’s work on creative leadership skills. They knew they were on to something.

The design thinking process has six key elements, which are applied to help leaders reframe their challenges, rapidly prototype solutions and focus on the customer experience. “Managers often know some techniques and principles for innovation,” says Dan. “What they don’t know is how to deal with the organizational issues around that. How do I foster this kind of activity? What can I do within my span of influence?”

Before focusing on leading for organizational innovation, Dan and David believe that leaders themselves must develop new ways of thinking and apply this to leadership tasks. “Throughout organizations, we need to bring new thinking and different actions to how we lead, manage and go about our work,” David explains. “We need to be asking ourselves, how can we think differently about our roles? How can we be agile and quick in the absence of information or predictability?”

Innovation Leadership workshop launched

To help leaders answer the questions at the intersection of innovation and leadership, the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) and Continuum launched the Innovation Leadership workshop. Offered globally as a two-day open-enrollment program, Innovation Leadership sessions are also available as in-house workshops and can be adapted as part of custom programs.

Interest in innovation and the power of design is not new. Businesses, institutions and agencies have talked a lot about innovation in recent years. With the recession, many feel constrained, yet pushed to do more and do better. “In just a couple years, we’ve seen that innovation has shifted from a buzz word to a reality,” Dan notes. “People are realizing, ‘We can’t just mouth the words. We have to actually try and make innovation happen.’”

“Managers and executives are saying, ‘I’ve got to be able to do things in radically different ways, but I’m not sure how to do that’,” says David. “Our role is to help them lead, think and act in support of innovation.”

“We want to create the iPod of our industry.” Dan Buchner hears that a lot from clients these days. His reply? “Do you have Steve Jobs as your CEO?”

Leadership is essential element

Buchner, an award-winning designer, entrepreneur and innovation consultant with global design firm Continuum, may not always be so blunt. But he’s getting at an essential, but often overlooked, element of successful innovation: leadership.

“If you’re not traditionally an innovative company, you don’t become innovative overnight by bringing someone in for a lecture or a project,” says Dan. “There’s work to be done.”

“In particular, there is leadership work to be done,” adds CCL’s David Horth.

Dan and David have spearheaded a partnership between the two organizations to teach “innovation leadership.” Nearly two years ago they realized that Dan’s “design thinking” model for innovation mapped almost directly to David’s work on creative leadership skills. They knew they were on to something.

Six key elements in the design thinking process

The design thinking process has six key elements, which are applied to help leaders reframe their challenges, rapidly prototype solutions and focus on the customer experience. “Managers often know some techniques and principles for innovation,” says Dan. “What they don’t know is how to deal with the organizational issues around that. How do I foster this kind of activity? What can I do within my span of influence?”

Before focusing on leading for organizational innovation, Dan and David believe that leaders themselves must develop new ways of thinking and apply this to leadership tasks. “Throughout organizations, we need to bring new thinking and different actions to how we lead, manage and go about our work,” David explains. “We need to be asking ourselves, how can we think differently about our roles? How can we be agile and quick in the absence of information or predictability?”

Workshops also available for in-house

To help leaders answer the questions at the intersection of innovation and leadership, CCL and Continuum launched the Innovation Leadership workshop. Offered globally as a two-day open-enrollment program, Innovation Leadership sessions are also available as in-house workshops and can be adapted as part of custom programs.

Interest in innovation and the power of design is not new. Businesses, institutions and agencies have talked a lot about innovation in recent years. With the recession, many feel constrained, yet pushed to do more and do better. “In just a couple years, we’ve seen that innovation has shifted from a buzz word to a reality,” Dan notes. “People are realizing, ‘We can’t just mouth the words. We have to actually try and make innovation happen.’”

“Managers and executives are saying, ‘I’ve got to be able to do things in radically different ways, but I’m not sure how to do that’,” says David. “Our role is to help them lead, think and act in support of innovation.”

By Mike Docherty, Venture 2

In my previous posts in this series, I highlighted examples of poorly integrated acquired innovation and some key success factors.  Here are some examples of “doing it right.”

Examples of companies that have successfully integrated innovation.

Great Harvest Bread:

In an NPR story, part of the station’s “Making Ends Meet” series that aired on October 23, I heard the story of Great Harvest Bakery, a franchise that encourages its franchisees throughout the U.S. to “do their own thing.” In other words, Franchise Central offers guidelines but truly allows frachisees to run their businesses as they see fit.

Often franchises are very conservative and strict when it comes to the leeway(or lack thereof) they give their franchisees in making business management, marketing and other decisions. The three sole requirements of this “freedom franchise”: 1) display the corporate logo, 2) bake the signature honey whole wheat bread and 3) grind fresh flour each day.

Focusing on a Seattle-based Great Harvest franchise, the story discusses the pastry innovation (e.g., “cini-minis”) and the general love the owner for what he has and what he offers. While not a typical example “integration” they have found a great balance between standardizing processes, while allowing individuality to continue to thrive.

P&G MDVIP 

I have previously discussed the interesting example of P&G acquiring MDVIP. It’s a very non-traditional example of acquiring new capabilities and brands. What’s also interesting now is to look back and discover that P&G , that behemoth of a company, that wrote the book on corporate “processes” has actually done an outstanding job of leaving a good thing alone. While P&G has direct involvement in the business (including some co-located P&G people), they’ve continued to allow MDVIP to operate somewhat independently, and have used the venture as a learning vehicle for expanding P&G’s ability to launch and grow service-based businesses, expecially in health care.

Printed with permission of Venture 2.

By Mike Docherty

In my first post on this topic, I discussed the importance of successful integration of innovation acquisitions. It’s a timely topic because increasingly, open innovation is being expanded from simply acquiring/licensing technologies to more situations of acquiring small companies as a platform for innovation-driven growth.

I’m differentiating here between M&A for traditional purposes (synergies, new market expansions, new categories, etc.) and acquisitions driven from the strategic goals of ‘ open innovation’ which are more about acquiring a technology or product platform that can be married with the large companies’ brands and distribution for rapid innovation-driven growth.

More and more start-ups are recognizing the value of selling directly to these large companies versus pursuing venture capital money and/or IPOs  to take the business to another level.  Here’s a link to an interesting article from last year in Fortune Small Business on that topic (I’m quoted in the article). 

In my prior post on this topic, I used the example of Black and Decker and Vector Products as something that represented what I see as an unsuccessful integration. In the post, I discuss how what looked like a smart acquisition turned out to have apparently destroyed the innovation that was acquired.

So what’s it take to make for a successful integration ?

Here’s my list of key success factors:

•  A recognition upfront of the cultural differences and sensitivity (especially on the large company’s part) to          those  differences.
• An integration strategy that deals not just the first 90 days (this is the part companies do well), but also the first 900 days (meaning that companies need to recognize the integration process is a 3-year process, not a 3-month process.)
• A willingness to allow exceptions to the rules–successful integrations allow these smaller enterpreneurial entities to sometimes play by different rules when it comes to financial reporting, bonus,/incentive structure and even reporting relationships.
• Senior leadership’s ability to accept and support ambiguity and dual systems, at least for a period of time. — I use the analogy of China and Hong Kong (somehow the People’s Republic of China has thus far been able to govern successfully under two vastly different approaches without destroying the success of Hong Kong’s openess)
• Most of all, the selection of a strong leader (who has creditability with and strong support of the parent company CEO for the acquired business who understands and can relate to both the parent company’s culture, systems and approaches, and the acquired company’s unique entrepreneurial style.  Often, this will turn out not to be the original founder/CEO, but rather someone who has had experience in both startups and the large corporate environments (likely the parent company).

In my next and last post,  I’ll provide  a few examples of companies doing this well.

Printed with permission of Mike Docherty at Venture 2.