Culture a ‘critical piece’ in innovation puzzle

Supratim Adhikari
JULY28, 2015
THE AUSTRALIAN
With innovation now on the lips of every executive and politician, turning the buzzword into something tangible requires organisations to understand that there’s no one size fits all approach that works, according to innovation guru Han Gerrits.
Mr Gerrits, a KPMG partner and founder of Netherlands-based Innovation Factory, said instead businesses needed to try to understand the myriad aspects and forms of innovation and see what best fitted their need. “Innovation comes in all shapes and sizes and what you want to do is create a culture of innovation, where people when they see something that can be improved they start working towards that,” he said.
“So that’s small innovation but it helps you develop a culture where innovation can grow.”
Culture is a critical piece of the puzzle, according to Mr Gerrits, because it underpinned the behavioural impetus needed for innovation. Walking the path of radical innovation, one that often requires an organisation to cannibalise its existing business, demands courage.
“Radical innovation, one that changes the existing rules of the game is very hard for incumbents to introduce to the market,” Mr Gerrits said.
“You need leadership that’s aware of what’s going on and is looking forward to what might be around the corner.
“This is very hard because for a lot of top management it’s much easier to just follow how things have been done in the past, and everyone just keeps passing it forward.”
Mr Gerrits acknowledged that the penny was starting to drop for big organisations with many either trying to emulate how start-ups worked or absorb them where possible.
But that leaves the question of whether they can successfully shed their baggage and, while extolling the virtues of a start-up mentality and agile methodology are almost par for the course in the current market, can a big incumbent really operate like a start-up?
According to Mr Gerrits, while big organisations can’t realistically become start-ups overnight, lessons from the start-up world are starting to filter into the broader consciousness.
One case in point is the growing trend to make innovation a key performance metric, which keeps it at the top of the list of priorities. He added that family-owned businesses were actually better placed when it comes to innovation than their corporate peers that have to answer to shareholders.
Innovation takes time, it takes money and it also takes a lot of patience and Mr Gerrits warned that the low barrier to the entries in the digital world meant that innovation without meaning was unlikely to provide the safety many businesses were seeking.
“It’s a winner-takes-all attitude on the internet and it’s very scary for big companies who find it very hard to change the way they do business,” he said.
“It’s a different set of rules and there aren’t too many companies that do this well and those that do respond only do it when there’s no turning back.”