Mid-market: are you getting in the way of your company’s innovators?

Mid-market: are you getting in the way of your company’s innovators?

Published 15 November 2013 11:44, Updated 15 November 2013 12:41

Kath Walters

Without leadership, innovation will falter and die. But sometimes, leaders can stifle innovation even when they have the best intentions. Leaders provide the essential framework for innovation, says Stuart Elliott, the managing director of Planet Innovation, a consultancy that helps clients build and commercialise new and improved products and services. Here are five ways that leaders can get in the way of their company’s innovative efforts.1. Lack of focus

“Leaders decide what the right problems to solve are, and those are the commercially valuable ones,” Elliott says.

“Employees are naturally creative, I believe, and if you ask them to be creative, half of them will solve a novel problem to do with their own pushbike,” he jokes. “The leader says these are the problems that are really important for our business to solve.”

2. Refuse permission for staff to work on ideas

Without explicit permission from leaders, staff will not be creative. It might be as simple as allocating time for staff to spend on their ideas, and then getting out of the way so they can do their thing.

3. Get too involved in new product development

Leaders must support innovation but not get too involved, according to a study by researchers from Europe and America, who surveyed nearly 400 global business units. They studied the relationships between leadership commitment and effectiveness of new product development (NPD) projects, and found the leaders can be seen as “meddling” if they do more than provide the vision and framework for innovation.

4. Foster a culture of blame

“What happens in your team or department when things go wrong?” asks innovation expert, Amantha Imber, in a recent blog. “Do fingers start pointing?”

Imber says that when companies allow a culture of blame to arise, innovation is “severely impeded” because staff are reluctant to share information, hide their mistakes, become anxious about risk, learn less and work less cohesively. Imber says risk-taking and flexibility are essential dimensions of a climate for innovation, according to academic research.

5. Install too many layers of management

Elliott says a flat structure encourages innovation. “We have a flat structure, and I can’t tell you how many times the junior guys walk into my office with a great idea.”

Some companies have taken the idea much further, devolving to a “spaghetti organisation”, used by the Danish hearing aid manufacturer, Oticon. People are not allocated to departments but move from project to project.

Project teams at W L Gore & Associates, manufacturer of GORE-TEX fabric, select their own leaders. The company has no executive structure and staff are appraised by peers. Some communities of innovators are self-managed. Wikipedia is an example.

Innovation is not just about making new products, Elliott says. “A business might say it is really important for our leaders to learn to tell stories, or to solve a diagnostic problem, or manage quality better. Innovation can start in any area of the business.”