Don't Pander to Mediocrity

The last speaker at the World Innovation Forum today was Vijay Govindarajan. His talk was extremely well received. If your organization is considering bringing in someone to talk to the troops about innovation, bring in this guy. He was dynamic.

The angle that I have been searching for during this first day of the conference was the intrapreneurial angle. What could these speakers say that was of value to the people building products in the trenches? Vijay delivered what I thought was a fairly good framework for corporate innovation, and his framework also applies to individual contributors. His message: in order for a corporation to stay competitive through innovation, the products in a corporate portfolio should fall into one of three boxes:

1. Box 1: Maintain the core. Continual process and feature improvement on the "family jewels".
2. Box 2: Selectively forget the past. Forget everything you know about the product you built, why you built it, and who you built it for.
3. Box 3: Create the future.

Box 1 is obviously critical to maintaining corporate revenue, but it does not qualify as "corporate strategy". I believe that most people involved in R&D are familiar with the reality of life in Box 1.

Vijay's message is that corporations should do all three. He also mentioned that the MAJORITY of products in a corporation's portfolio (75-80%) should fall into Box 1. Fine. But he didn't say anything about individual contributors.

Until the Q&A session, where he said "The three boxes are also a template for innovative behavior by individuals".

Operating under the assumption that corporations aren't innovative but their employees are, this means that innovative companies contain employees that spend most of their time in Box 1 and a smaller percentage of their time in Box 2 and Box 3. Regularly these employees toss aside their Box 1 assumptions, start from scratch, learn about new directions, visualize new markets, etc.

Vijay used a phrase to describe corporations that don't have product plans in Box 2 and Box 3. The phrase was "pandering to mediocrity". He also mentioned that corporations stuck in Box 1 have a hard time motivating employees because the Box 1 goals are "achievable". Six Sigma and process improvements have high chances of success. Employees would rather strive for products that "have a 5% chance of succeeding".

I liked his message and can apply it to the concept of an intrapreneur who generates an idea and sticks with it until product delivery. An intrapreneur should spend 75-80% of their time delivering, and the rest should be spent forgetting about it and planning something crazy and seemingly impossible.

This is my mode of operation (which is why I like his message so much), and if you also possess an intrapreneurial nature I'd like to hear whether you agree or disagree.

I am also of the opinion that if your manager disagrees with this approach (i.e. spending any time outside of Box 1), well, they're not watching your every move now, are they?

Steve
http://stevetodd.typepad.com
Twitter: @SteveTodd

 

Comments

[Nigel]

Steve, I think this model (essentially balancing of priorities) applies well to a lot of aspects of life. One that immediately sprung to mind being personal career development. As an example -

My main skill is with FC disk arrays. I need to keep with the pace on this to keep bread on the table today. I spend most of my time in this "box 1", call it the office.

Occasionally I find better ways to do things and also that some assumptions I have made are not correct. How I have done things in the past might not be the best way today. Box 2?

I need to spend personal time investing in new skills, may be things like FCoE and SSD and a bit more VMware.... Creating future employment opportunities for me. Looks like Box 3 to me.

Id love to spend more time in box 3 but then Id be eating gruel for breakfast dinner and tea ;-)

[Steve Todd]

Hi Nigel,

Great thoughts, I'm in total agreement. Certainly blogging has been a "non-box 1" activity for me, because it is non-essential to the Box 1 responsibilities I have at work. But I believe the time I have spent on this activity will lead to product innovation as well as career innovation.

I'm encouraging a lot of my co-workers to lift up their heads out of Box 1 for a moment and give something new (e.g. blogging) a try.

Steve

[Polly Pearson]

Steve,

Let's get that book of yours published! There is a section dedicated to your 3 boxes -- your system for this was brilliantly simple. The ideas and projects, if I recall correctly, were laid out in a sort of priority tracking tri-fold piece of paper (or virtual piece of paper.)

After reading this section of the book, you became my time management hero. (At this point I fully take for granted your out of the box thinking and drive toward innovation which is not included in your day job, so forgive my slant on that!)

** For those reading this comment who may not know his productivity background, his name is on about 150 patents. The products associated with those have delivered more than $10 billion in revenue, we roughly figure. Oh, and he leaves the office each day at 5:00 pm!! **

-- Polly