Driving Organic Growth and Innovation

Underpinning of Driving Organic Growth Blog

by Robert Cooper

After much investigation I found four critical components of a successful corporate innovation effort and have tagged the posts in this blog appropriately.

The Critical Role of Leadership
Leadership must frame the overall innovation effort; make the critical resource decisions in a transparent fashion; clear any obstacles that would impede momentum; legitimize the initiatives within the corporation; and, play a major role in setting the climate for innovation.

The Importance of an enabling Corporate Climate
Corporate Climate deals with the: cultural barriers to growth through innovation; the skills required; the incentive systems to create the right behavior; the managing systems and attitude. We have found that managing business risk is an absolutely critical component to a successful, sustainable innovation effort.

Sources of Ideas
Ideas are of course the basis for innovation. Where they come from is changing dramatically. We will discuss this thoroughly going forward. However, you will fall way short if all you do is generate ideas.

The Importance of Process
Process is the final component to a successful innovation effort and we will share what different companies have tried. Within this group there are sub-groups of Managing Uncertainty, Being Ambidextrous and Creating Competitive Separation.

Thursday, May 22, 2014

Ambidexterity: The Art of Thriving in Complex Environments

by Martin Reeves, Knut Haanæs, James Hollingsworth, and Filippo L. Scognamiglio Pasini

https://www.bcgperspectives.com/content/articles/business_unit_strategy_growth_ambidexterity_art_of_thriving_in_complex_environments/

This is one of the most important aspects of the MDG framework and an area we spend considerable time on in our Kellogg class. My goal is to entice you to view the entire article

Managers today face an apparent contradiction. On one hand, austerity in the developed world and intense competition push them to cut costs and drive efficiency. On the other, the increasing pace of change means they need to emphasize innovation.

Resolving this contradiction requires ambidexterity—the ability to both explore new avenues and exploit existing ones. Companies need ambidexterity when operating in diverse environments that require different styles of strategy simultaneously, or in dynamic environments that require them to transition between styles over time.

Companies need to be ambidextrous when operating in both emerging and developed markets, when bringing new products and technologies to market while exploiting existing ones, when integrating startups into their existing business, and in a range of other circumstances.

The need to develop ambidexterity is widely acknowledged: in a recent BCG survey of 130 senior executives of major public and private companies, fully 90 percent agreed that being able to manage multiple strategy styles and transition between them was an important capability to develop. But this aspiration is hard to realize. Exploration and exploitation require different ways of organizing and managing….

…..3M, a company renowned for its culture of innovation, experienced the exploration-exploitation tradeoff in the early 2000s, when it introduced Six Sigma practices in an effort to boost productivity. While the company’s productivity did indeed increase, the same practices reduced 3M’s ability to innovate, as evidenced by a fall in the proportion of revenues from new products.

Picking the Right Approach to Ambidexterity (see the article for details
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