Innovatsioonist ilma Apple'i näiteta

Brand Manual on pea kaks aastat aidanud ettevõtetel parandada oma konkurentsieeliseid. Üsna pea tajusime, et vastuseis meie mõtetele tuleneb sellest, et brändingu nime all on ettevõtetele müüdud logo joonistamist ning sisuline töö on jäetud tegemata.

Sestap panime kokku oma koolituse, Branding ABC, kus lahkasime sõnastatud konkurentsieelise temaatikat. Oleme koolitust edukalt läbi viinud mitmekümne ettevõttega ja soovitame seda endiselt oma tulevastele klientidele kui ka kõigile, kes tahavad lisaks teoreetilistele aruteludele ka praktilist nõu saada.

Nüüd võtsime oma fookuse alla innovatsiooni. Kuidas toimub uuendusprotsess, mis seda takistab ja millised on universaalsed tööriistad selle läbiviimiseks. Me ei räägi radikaalsest innovatsioonist, leiutamisest, me räägime astmelisest innovatsioonist. Me räägime sellest, miks ettevõtted muutuvad kasvades innovatsioonivaenulikuks ja kuidas nende juhtkond ei saa sellest enne teada kui nende naftaplatvorm juba põleb.

Eelmise aasta lõpus viisime oma klientide seas läbi küsitluse, kus mitmed kliendid heitsid meile ette jäärapäisust. Samas toodi meie põhimõttekindlust välja kui tugevust, mis võimaldab kord ette võetud tee lõpuni käia. Kui soov on kaalust alla võtta, siis aitab sihikindel treener.

Seesama oskus minna oma ideede elluviimisel lõpuni välja on see, mille oleme nüüd vorminud päevaseks koolituseks, mil nimeks Innovatsiooni ABC. Kavatseme selle ka materjalina üles riputada, kel aga suurem huvi, võib saada osa meie testkoolitusest, saates meile kirja.

Üks märkus veel. Oleme oma suhtluses läinud üle inglise keelele puhtpraktilistel kaalutlustel. Meie teenuseid vajavad Eesti miljonist elanikust 1%, samas on meil maailmas miljon potentsiaalset klienti, kellest vaid 1% räägib eesti keelt.

Innovate or die: but how?

Image courtesy of 15/30 Research

Companies that continuously come up with new and exciting stuff have one thing in common: little management and lots of leadership. The company has a goal, everyone knows what the goal is and does their part, in helping the company achieve that goal.

The cumbersome, not-fun, uninspiring company has a plan. Everyone in the company has a job to do. "Your part in the great plan is to serve customers water." Management has reduced every task to a manual. There is a clear hierarchy and everything is being measured for efficiency. Redundancies are quickly eliminated. People work to prove their importance for the plan, but no one knows what the goal is. Turf wars are more important than customers.

The former company innovates daily. The latter company optimizes daily.

The danger to the former company is to become like the latter company. The latter company is likely to become extinct. You can blame management for both scenarios.

Managers optimize. Leaders empower. Innovation requires both, but if management and optimization becomes too important then innovation will disappear. Innovation requires that people are motivated about their jobs and that they continuously think about what could be done better AND that they have the power to implement their ideas. Management doesn't like unstructured, unplanned activities because they are inefficient.

People having inspiring ideas are inefficient, because they won't have the ideas on schedule. That messes up the whole production cycle. Therefore if the manager has to approve a budget for the engineers to come up with improvements but he's not sure that the engineers will be on time or on budget, then it's easier to say no to the whole thing. After all, no manager has been fired for reducing risk. Of course, in three years time, when the company is about to go out of business because there hasn't been a new idea for 10 years, taking risks will seem awfully safe.

Innovate or die: but how?

Innovation can be learnt. Innovation depends on people who can be empowered. Innovation depends on communication and trust, which can be built up again. Innovation depends on leadership, the right of which can be earned. Innovation cannot be managed, it must be allowed to thrive. Innovation pays off in the long-term. Continuous innovation pays off continuously. Optimization pays off in the short term and over time, less and less.

We developed Innovation ABC following the success of our Branding ABC course. Whereas Branding ABC looks at how brands are built in companies, involving the whole company then Innovation ABC looks narrowly at the process of coming up with new ideas.

• How to build up a company structure that supports innovation and nurtures it.
• How to keep the business focus on the idea, not the method of execution of the business plan.
• How to motivate people and how to work with them so that innovative ideas just happen.
• And most importantly, how to handle the fuzzy front end of innovation projects, where you don't know where you're going, how you're going to get there and how it is all going to end.

For more information check out our website.

Merry Christmas Experiment

A phone call from a confused client inspired us to make public, and thus conclude, our little Christmas card experiment. We had almost completely forgotten the whole thing, since it all took place more than 6 weeks ago. It appears, however, that due to the "good" service of global postal companies there is still plenty of room for late Christmas greetings and pleasant surprises. So be sure to check your snail-mailboxes every now and then.

On December 13th we posted three different postcards (see the winter magic above) with Brand Manual's best wishes to our clients and friends from 10 different locations all over the world: Estonia, Russia, Portugal, USA, Malaysia, Australia, United Arab Emirates, Sweden and God knows where (we really don't remember the last two locations ;). So it was a random lottery for the recipients, when and from where they would receive their three cards, and apparently it is still happening, as a card from UAE finally made it to one of our Estonian clients 2 days ago. Only to be followed by another one from Kuala Lumpur that made it to Tallinn today. Who knows how many cards are still on their way or have been lost on their quest of getting together the big picture.

For those that are still waiting for their set of cards or want to pay their tribute to the ones that went "missing in action", here's copys of all three of them.

PS. How did the 4 of us manage to post cards from 10 different locations, thousands of miles apart, all at the same time? Send us a postcard when you figure it out!