9.6.2010

INNOVATION DRIVERS – AND KILLERS

Innovation is often accidental, but it can also be cultured and nurtured, as well as killed – by bad management.

A good innovation leader stimulates, steers and sustains innovations, but who is a good innovation leader? Jean-Philippe Deschamps, Emeritus Professor of Technology and Innovation Management at IMD, described characters that define good innovation leaders at the Millennium Technology Week Summit in Helsinki.

The institution that Mr. Deschamps represents, IMD, is the International Institute for Management Development, a non-profit business school located in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Drivers: Passion, discipline and openness

First, a good innovation leader needs both emotion and realism, passion for creativity, but at the same time also process discipline: “They have to be execution oriented and should have courage to also stop projects, not just start them. And of course, they need some discernment when to persist and when to pull the plug”.

Secondly, an innovation leader needs to have an acceptance of risk and failure. “Failure is ok, but you better prevent it, or at least learn from it,” Deschamps said.

Third, a good innovation leader needs talent to build and steer winning teams. “Teams of virtuosos are difficult to manage,” Deschamps reminded.

Fourth, they need to be open to external technologies and ideas. “The leader should urge people to get out and broaden their horizon and encourage their internal and external networks.”

Killers: arrogance, complacency and greed

Another speaker, Mr. Petri Kokko represents also learning and development, but from a salesman’s or marketer’s perspective, like he himself described. Kokko is Director of Global Sales at Google’s Learning & Development department, based at Google’s headquarters in California.

Mr. Kokko said in his presentation that the key drivers for innovation are culture, resources and infrastructure. Out of the several types of innovations Mr. Kokko underlined business model innovation that also Google is famous of. Moderator Juha-Pekka Raeste pointed out that Google has some 300 products and 297 of them the company gives out free – and still manages to be very profitable.

“We strongly believe in open innovation and collaboration”, Kokko says. “In the end it is the customer who comes first, or decides, like they used to say at my former job at Nike.”

The audience asked Kokko, what he thinks are the main threats Google is facing. Kokko referred back to Mr. Deschamps’ list of innovation killers: arrogance, complacency or self-satisfaction and greed.
“We have to continue innovating!”

pekka.virolainen@technologyacedemy.fi