Your Innovation department = Your Big Mistake!

Innovation is the buzz word of the century. There are many more – and this is not an attempt to disenfranchise any of them – but this Innovation is the work of kings. The cool, “Steve Jobs types”, innovate. They attend presentations on innovation at cool places; call in top-tier consultants such as McKinsey and Booz; they drop the word in everything that they do at every opportunity they get.

Now, how can the CIO stay away when the boss has drunk the Kool-aid?

If you have the urge to innovate – it is a very good thing. But how you go about this good thing can make all the difference in the world. Please do not start another department of “innovation” or “leading edge technologies” or “emerging technologies” or something along those lines.

Departments are like hands without a body; wheels without a car; horse without a carriage…the list of corny analogies is endless. The point is that it is a process that delivers value not a department. The department will have to interact with all the other parts and pieces of the organization. That is where this “innovative” part will be, by definition, out of synch with the “old” parts and the machine will fail – usually it is the new part that is thrown out.

So creating a department is good only if you empower them with complete responsibility, and commensurate authority, over the end to end process – soup to nuts delivery of value i.e. create a little company within a company.

But that will also fail in some circumstances.

So if you insist on following this “department” approach, you may be better off having the “department” outside the company i.e. create a new company!

Now you are wondering why you read this post – I did not offer any solutions. That is what business week is for – here’s the story!