Читать книгу Fearless Innovation - Alex Goryachev - Страница 7

Innovation is a horrible word.

The term has become so buzzy, it seems to have lost all practical meaning. Ask a hundred people to define it and you’ll receive just as many different answers. And, you know what? All of these answers might be right—or they might be wrong.

This is, in part, due to the fact that discussions about the topic are everywhere today. If you actually google “What is innovation?” you will receive nearly half a million results, and according to Google Trends, the number of search requests for news related to “innovation” tripled between 2014 and 2019.¹ Not a day goes by without another dozen articles, blog posts, or think pieces on the concept, highlighting how we all need to be more innovative and showcasing the latest process and methodology that should be immediately adopted. We read, listen, and try to keep up, looking for clarity and some type of real-world application of what is seen as a squishy subject with no end.

Today, 63 percent of companies are hiring chief innovation officers, and more than 90 percent of companies are implementing new tech to support innovation processes.² Sure, that’s great, but there’s a problem here: despite the obvious growth of demand for “innovation,” we remain utterly confused about the concept. In the meantime, most leaders believe that dropping the word into a shareholder letter from time to time or mentioning it at a quarterly employee all-hands meeting is enough to prove that they’re on top of the trend. Let me let you in on a little secret: they’re not.

Many of these organizations relegate innovation to one very special team somewhere in the “hip” part of the office, featuring free snacks and “edgy” motivational posters, and they think they’ve done their job—innovation is enabled; time to celebrate! It’s understandable. With so much information out there on the topic, it’s hard to know where to start, let alone with what goal and for what purpose, even for the “practitioners” themselves. Leaders are enthusiastic about encouraging everyone to be innovative, yet vague about what this means in practical terms. In return, employees have little interest in something that their bosses don’t know what to do with or can’t even describe.

But why does this matter? If “innovation” is such a buzzword, what’s the point? And why in the hell are you reading another book on the topic? Why not stick to business as usual and just ask marketing and PR to make your company appear more innovative? Innovation is an amorphous concept anyhow, the business jargon du jour, the latest flavor of the month. In short, a bunch of bullshit. Right?

Well, I’m here to tell you that though innovation can be confusing, misunderstood, and even pull-your-hair-out frustrating at times (just take a look at my author photo), it is, in fact, far from bullshit. Throughout the centuries, it has been at the core of human aspirations and essential to the world’s most successful companies, organizations, cities, and countries. Innovation is the only proven path to business growth and societal impact, whether measured in money or happiness. It’s not a “nice-to-have”—it’s a necessity.

If leaders refuse innovation, then it disappears in the cracks, left without clear purpose, unmeasured and unaccountable. Even if they give it lip service, without action and reinforcement, it goes nowhere and actually sets organizations on a dangerous and eventually self-destructive path. But when leaders embrace innovation and welcome change, well, that’s another story.