Depending on your age, the ‘cyberspace’ seems to have been around forever. Science fiction writer, William Gibson, first coined the term in the early 1980s as shorthand for a shadowy world populated by mad scientists, IT geeks and societal fringe-dwellers. Now, while still vaguely sinister, it’s moved mainstream. In this emerging world, knowing which way to jump – to stay ahead of the curve – is a challenge that keeps many leaders awake at night. For innovators, experimentation is a proven way forward. “For whatever reason, when God created the world, he made data only available about the past,” says Harvard Business School professor, Clayton Christensen, co-author of The Innovator’s DNA. “If you’re trying to be innovative, and you have this data-driven mindset, you can’t go forward. So experimenting essentially says, ‘I don’t want to wait until somebody provides data. I need to get out there and create data’.” Christensen’s project identified experimentation as part of the so-called innovator’s DNA. “In a complex world, it is close to impossible to predict or control the future,” says University of Queensland innovation researcher, Tim Kastelle. “But we can try to influence by experimenting.” Yet trying new approaches in itself is not enough; we have to learn from experimentation in a disciplined way, argues Tuck innovation expert, Vijay Govindarajan in The Other Side of Innovation. “When we speak with executives about the overriding importance of learning from experiments, we sometimes sense a degree of impatience,” Govindarajan says. “The overwhelming goal, in the minds of some, is not learning; it is results.” To counter this common view, he and co-author Chris Trimble devoted half their book to the how-to elements of disciplined experimentation. “Some experiments will fail,” Govindarajan says. “There is never any excuse, however, for not learning in a quick and disciplined fashion. Doing so minimises the cost of failure and maximises the probability of success.”
Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos, isn’t afraid to be pilloried in pursuit of his vision. Now a market darling, Bezos has had his share of being hammered by analysts and investors over his long-term strategy. Instead of folding under pressure, he enshrined his leadership principles in Amazon’s employee handbook, which warns that “thinking small is a self-fulfilling prophecy”. To strategy and innovation researcher, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Bezos typifies the courageous leader who pushes the boundaries and gets things done. “Lack of courage stymies positive change at all levels,” Kanter says. “To act requires courage. To innovate requires even more courage. Today, courage seems in short supply. What are leaders waiting for?” Winning hearts and minds goes well beyond niceties, with research by Steven Kaplan and colleagues indicating that CEOs’ execution skills are a defining factor in gaining respect. “The most successful CEOs were those who were persistent, effective and proactive,” Kaplan reports, adding that Bezos had been described as “one who can inspire and cajole but also irritate and berate”. The best CEOs are innovators, according to US business magazine Barron’s, whose 30-strong list of ‘world-class’ CEOs includes seven from dotcom companies. The magazine’s other must-have CEO traits: thinking like a company owner, a global focus, and delivering for all stakeholders. Accountability is high on the list of digital marketer, Damian Bazadona, who nominates a consistent set of traits he’s observed in countless interactions with successful business leaders. “The best of the best are passionate, innovative, demanding and caring,” he says. They surround themselves with smart people, demand accountability, are engaged in their surroundings and seek out positive energy. “Passionate leaders are inherently optimistic,” Bazadona says. “They have no time for pessimism.” Adds Kanter: “Intellectual courage is necessary to challenge conventional wisdom and imagine new possibilities. Leaders must refuse to accept limits or stop at industry boundaries.”
Executives might complain about them, but silos go back a long way. The Greeks used them to store grain as early as the late eighth century BC, although credit for the first modern tower silo goes to Fred Hatch, an American farmer who claimed the invention in 1873. Silos entered management jargon in earnest with the emergence of new, disruptive technologies and increasing complexity arising from bigger corporations and more globally dispersed operations and alliances. Once lauded for their protective qualities (in information as well as grain), silos are now seen as the enemy of collaboration, yet they are allowed to survive and flourish in many organisations. According to Mitch Ditkoff, co-founder of Idea Champions, they are a key reason most corporate innovation efforts fail. “Many organisations are launching all kinds of ‘innovation initiatives’, hoping to stir the creative soup,” Ditkoff says. “This is commendable. But it is also, all too often, a disappointing experience.” Even Procter & Gamble, a company often cited as an innovation role model, struggled with the cultural implications of a genuinely open idea flow. “Until very recently, P&G was deeply centralised and internally focused,” P&G executives, Larry Huston and Nabil Sakkab, reflected in 2006. “For connect and develop to work, we’ve had to nurture an internal culture change while developing systems for making connections. And that has involved not only opening the company’s floodgates to ideas from the outside but actively promoting internal ideas exchanges as well.” It’s one of the reasons innovation flourishes in startups and smaller organisations, says open innovation consultant and author, Stefan Lindegaard. “Large corporations, with their abundance of silos and bureaucratic levels, often require considerable time to make decisions,” Lindegaard says. “Analysis paralysis is not uncommon, with decisions that seem simple to an outsider taking ages to make.” To counter the silo effect, growing numbers of big corporations are developing “ambassadors” or “idea scouts/connectors” to breach silo walls, strengthen influential networks and create momentum for change. As researcher Eoin Whelan and his colleagues found, such explicit strategies are essential to ensure sustainable innovation. “Promising ideas will not mature into innovative outcomes,” they say, “unless they reach the parts of the employee network that have the expertise and influence to exploit them.”
