My wife is an opera singer and was recently invited to take part in a brand new work. I went along to some of the rehearsals. These were a microcosm of business innovation.
The author of the work had a really good and original idea. Sadly, he was unable to translate it into action. Also, as it was an amateur company, they were constrained in many different ways; from costumes, sets, lighting and marketing budget.
In this video Seth Godin, points out that "ideas are only effective when they spread." He quotes the example of the inventor of sliced bread, whose idea languished for 17 years until it was marketed.
In a related experience, I was asked recently whether creating a bank of ideas was a good suggestion. By this I understood that the client wanted to create a kind of electronic bulletin board with a 'suggestion box'. I explained that while this looked good on paper more investigation was required.
What drives staff to put forward ideas into an anonymous suggestion box for others to process? If there is an incentive attached, would it be linked to the number of ideas, the quality of the ideas, whether the ideas get implemented, the effect of the ideas post implementation?
We need to tackle innovation in organisations in a more holistic fashion. This can start by diagnosing where in the innovation value chain we need attention. Sometimes a firm will have lots of ideas but not be able to implement them, others may suffer from not being able to get them marketed adequately.
Simply having a bunch of ideas in an electronic system is not good enough.
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