Most of us understand that innovation is enormously important. It's the only insurance against irrelevance. It's the only guarantee of long-term customer loyalty. It's the only strategy for out-performing a dismal economy.
Interpretation
Innovation is vital for relevance and long-term success in business.
In this quote, Gary Hamel emphasizes the critical role of innovation in maintaining competitiveness and relevance in today's fast-paced world. He argues that without continuous innovation, businesses risk becoming irrelevant, lose customer loyalty, and may struggle to thrive in a poor economic environment. Thus, innovation is presented not only as a strategy for growth but as a necessary foundation for enduring success.
In practice
During a business seminar, to highlight the need for continuous improvement.
The real damper on employee engagement is the soggy, cold blanket of centralized authority. In most companies, power cascades downwards from the CEO. Not only are employees disenfranchised from most policy decisions, they lack even the power to rebel against egocentric and tyrannical supervisors.
The biggest barriers to strategic renewal are almost always top management's unexamined beliefs.
To create an organization that's adaptable and innovative, people need the freedom to challenge precedent, to 'waste' time, to go outside of channels, to experiment, to take risks and to follow their passions.
If customer ignorance is a profit centre for you, you're in trouble.
It doesn't matter much where your company sits in its industry ecosystem, nor how vertically or horizontally integrated it is - what matters is its relative 'share of customer value' in the final product or solution, and its cost of producing that value.
The single biggest reason companies fail is they overinvest in what is, as opposed to what might be.
The culture is what creates the foundation for all future innovation. If you break the culture, you break the machine that creates your products.
The way innovating companies are designed leaves ambiguities, overlaps, decision conflicts or decision vacuums in some parts of the organisation. People rail at this, curse it-and invent innovative ways to overcome it.
Creativity is every company's first driver. It's where everything starts, where energy and forward motion originate. Without that first charge of creativity, nothing else can take place.
Removing the faults in a stage-coach may produce a perfect stage-coach, but it is unlikely to produce the first motor car.
Want to increase innovation? Lower the cost of failure.
Predicting innovation is something of a self-canceling exercise: the most probable innovations are probably the least innovative.
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