Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Is there a time not to innovate?

Companies seem to be bipolar when it comes to innovation, either the company claims it is innovative or the culture does not support innovation and the company puts no emphasis on it - one extreme or the other.

But, is there a time when an innovative company may say now is not the time to innovate?  A recent post by Simon Hill suggests that there ARE five times when a company may decide now is not the time to innovate.

1. When an old product is still providing good results, brand awareness, and seems likely to be successful in the current market for some time.  Although a company may think this is not the time to innovate, I would suggest that this is in fact, the time to innovate.  It is from this position that companies are often surprised by disruptive innovations below the horizon.

2. When your market is resistance to change is suggested as time not to innovate.  Innovation may cause your market to move to some other brand because of the changes you made. But, eventually all customers will move to a brand and product that meets their needs and is cheaper or because their needs have expanded.

3. When a company is not doing well in the market and financial stability is required may be a time not to innovate.  But, even here the company should innovate to meet market demands.  These innovations may be incremental and not disruptive, but turbulence in the market is often caused by competing brands with similar characteristics with not real leader.

4. If a company has no ideas may be a good time not to spend the effort to innovate.  While this may be true in the short term to conserve resources it is not true for the longer term.  If you have no new ideas it will be difficult to survive.

5. It may not be a time to innovate when you start copying other's ideas.  This premise comes from the previous one.  If you have no ideas, and the market is moving forward, you have to come up with ideas from somewhere, so why not copy what the leaders are doing?  This ideas does not usually work well unless you can do it significantly cheaper with the same quality.  Better to examine what you need to do in your company to bring in the resources you need to be truly innovative.

My conclusion is that there are NO times when you don't want to be innovative,  But you do need to focus your innovation.

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