CHAPTER 1

The Innovative Organization

When the DuPont Center for Creativity and Innovation was created, we needed amodel on which to structure our offerings. Having been a manager of research anddevelopment for some 18 years, I drew from my personal experience about theenvironmental factors that help innovation and the ones that can quash it. Sincethat time I have refined the model that appears in Figure 1-1. I call itthe "Innovation Competence Model," since the model works for most anyorganizational competence.

The Three Arenas of Innovation Competence

The three arenas of the competence model are education about theprinciples, tools, and techniques of creativity and innovation;application of these principles, tools, and techniques to solve criticalbusiness problems; and leadership in the workplace to enable innovation.Developing an internal competence for innovation requires a systemic approach inall three arenas.

It is a mistake to think that focus on one area alone will result in an increasein innovation competence. That's why training in creative thinking techniquesalone will be uniquely ineffective in improving innovation competence unlessthere is attention given to the remaining areas, application and leadership.Leaders who delegate innovation to the training department will always bedisappointed with the outcome, since innovation requires total commitment andleadership from the very top of the organization.

Since I first published this Innovation Competence Model (Blueprints forInnovation, New York: American Management Association, 1995), a number oforganizations have embraced it, most notably the 3M Company's Grass RootsInnovation Team (GRIT), whose members found they were already doing what themodel illustrated. As Kim Johnson, leader of the 3M GRIT. says, "The Model ofThe Innovative Organization gave structure and brought clarity to what we weredoing, and made it easier to communicate to upper levels of leadership. We werehappy to have independent confirmation of our programs and activities." If youare to use this book as a guide for innovation in your organization, werecommend you use the Innovation Competence Model as the unifying system fordefining and for describing each specific activity.

At the DuPont Center for Creativity and Innovation, we offered courses increative thinking (education) and facilitated problem solving workshops(application), but we naïvely assumed that leaders in a company known forinnovation would themselves know how to lead it. That was a mistake. Since thenwe have developed a strong focus on innovation leadership so that innovation cancontinue after the consultant goes home. We now know that total leadershipcommitment from the top is the single most important factor in a company's levelof innovation competence and its innovation success.

Innovation Leadership from the Top

In the first of several insightful articles on the short life span of some 20"centers of innovation" in major U.S. corporations—all of which werediscontinued ("Can Corporate Innovation Champions Survive?" ChemicalInnovation, November 2001, Vol. 31, No. 11, pp. 14-22; available atpubs.acs.org), Jack Hipple points out vividly the absolute requirementfor solid and consistent involvement and commitment from the topmost leadership.In addition he points out that the people who were the leaders of innovationcenters all differed significantly in creativity and personality style fromtheir superiors, whose continued support was necessary for survival. Theinnovation center leaders were tolerant of ambiguity and strongly preferred the"change the system" problem-solving style (see Chapter 12), whereas themanagers to whom they reported were intolerant of ambiguity and preferred theopposite "perfect the system" problem-solving style. This great dissimilaritywas not understood at the time and caused real problems in seeing value and incommunication. Hipple also points out that many of the physical facilities thatwere created and decorated with great excitement and fanfare are today computerrooms.

There are three important lessons:

* Topmost leadership support is absolutely vital.

* All parties need to truly value diverse problem-solving styles.

* Physical trappings are relatively unimportant.

In company after company, we have seen innovation delegated to lower-levelpeople, only to falter for lack of support from the top. If you want tounderstand the true value system of any organization, look at the budgetingprocess. Which functions get the money. Is there a budget for innovation?

Apple's iPod and iPhone: Models of Top Management Support

The story of the development of the iPod illustrates the effective and criticalrole that leadership from the top plays in innovation. Steve Jobs is one of themost iconic and celebrated leaders of innovation in the business world today.Since his return to the leadership of Apple in 1997, the company has beenreshaped and has created a continuing stream of high-impact, customer-focusedinnovations that Jobs was responsible for leading as CEO. Jobs has been sosuccessful at reinvigorating the innovation machine at Apple that it has beenrecognized by Business Week four years in a row (2005-2008) as theworld's number-one innovative company.

Nothing epitomizes Apple's resurgence and Jobs's ability to align hisorganization around a singular and powerful vision more than the iPod. As Jobssaid, "If ever there was a product that catalyzed Apple's reason for being, it'sthis [iPod], because it combines Apple's incredible technology base with Apple'slegendary ease of use with Apple's awesome design." When the iPod project waslaunched in early 2001, there were already portable digital music players on themarket, but they were difficult to use and poorly done. Jobs had a vision oftransforming the portable music listener's experience so that with the iPod"listening to music will never be the same again."

The first step was aligning the whole organization around the vision of creatinga high-capacity music player that could hold the user's complete music library.In addition, in the words of Steve Jobs (quoted in the Apple press release,October 23, 2001), "With iPod, Apple has invented a whole new category ofdigital music player that lets you put your entire music collection in yourpocket and listen to it wherever you go." The iPod changed the way people listedto music forever—and it...