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54% of CEOs Dissatisfied With Innovation
athloi writes "Invention is new and clever; innovation is a process that takes knowledge and uses it to get a payback. Invention without a financial return is just an expense. Ideas are really the sexy part of innovation and there's rarely a shortage of them. If you look at the biggest problems around innovation, rarely does a lack of ideas come up as one of the top obstacles; instead, it's things like a risk-averse culture, overly lengthy development times and lack of coordination within the company. Not enough ideas, on the other hand, is an obstacle for only 17 percent. At the end of the day all that creativity and all those ideas have to show on the bottom line. The goal of innovation is to make or save money, and IT should never lose sight of that central fact."
Seriously.
This is no surprise to me. In my company (name withheld), innovation is given lip service only. New ideas are frowned upon and generally rebutted with "that's not the way we do things around here" or the cynicism of "they would never go for that". I believe that the IT management in my company only does what makes them look good for their own personal gain (promotion, bonuses, etc.) and see very little evidence of pushing things that will help the company (and our customers). If it's not a "safe" solution (Sun, IBM, or "blessed" by Gartner), then it's not something to be taken seriously.
That the two are inexorably linked. Innovation without invention id what exactly? The problem is that most of the CEOs that are complaining, cannot see past their 13 week (quarter) window. The real problem is there is no long term research that will lead to innovation.
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Innovation must also solve a problem with the status quo (even if only not perfectly perceived). Big Picture Executives and Chief Lieutenants get into discussions all day about "we could do this", and later learn that it has a complex side effect. If the side effect is solved, innovate. If the side effect is worse than the original problem, then that idea has to be parked for some length of time until the atmosphere changes and it can be revisited.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
If they were so worried about innovation, they'd let their employees use it (I'm talking from an IT perspective here). At my last job, we had good solutions in place to do things cheaper, faster, and better (yup, all three). But management insisted on leaving that system to go with a vendor's solution that used canned products to 'solve' the problem for a lot more cost and effort. And it never worked well.
Fast forward to today. I'm interviewing for jobs. Every single company I interview with doesn't care what my aptitude is, or what I can do to help the business use technology to give them a great ROI on technology while solving their problems. They only care "Do you know product X?"
So, my own experience shows me that CEO's certainly don't give a crap about innovation. Or, if they do, their IT managers certainly aren't following their vision (actually, I do think that is probably the case, as I saw some evidence of that at the last company after each quarterly meeting where I'd agree with what the CEO wanted to do, but my own management would always go down the buy the canned solution that doesn't work so well path).
This alone stifles creativity and innovation.....
Perhaps they should get a fucking clue?
Golly gee!! I wonder why on earth I don't work IT anymore! It could also be that a lot of these CEO's don't know their ass from a hole in the ground either.
At Boston Scientific the new mantra is efficient innovation, brought to you by people who grossly overpaid to purchase innovation (Guidant), to the ruin of all.
an ill wind that blows no good
from TFA:
Andrew: Innovation is a three-step process: 1. Generate an idea. 2. Commercialize it. 3. Realize the value.
this guy is a genius.
If only I had know it was this simple before, I have wasted my career...
sigs are for losers (except to point out that sigs are for losers)
While you may not be the exception to the rule, the fact stands that when the process has some type of reward (versus your no reward), we wind up having more of it. That way it doesn't matter what your intentions are, sheerly that it got done (where 'it' in this case is more innovation).
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
Many innovators become CEO's/CXO's themselves. Why work for the "man" if you're smarter than he is? Perhaps you should try it and see if you're really innovating or just pretending.
If this is truly the case, come work for me for no paycheck. We'll see how long you truly desire the effort with no reward.
Yeah, you sure told that guy! What an idiot, to think that there's people out there who would do work for no money at all! Why, I can't believe that any thinking person would ever volunteer such a foolish idea!
Now where the hell is that intern with my coffee?
I never have frustrations, the reason is, to wit:
If at first I don't succeed, I quit!
This smells like basic management consulting stuff
1. Catch as many ideas as possible
2. Usually an initial independent review "does this make sense at all?"
3. Priority process, typically in several stages
3a) Benefit estimates, cost estimates, risk etc. into a business plan
3b) More review (alone)
3c) Prioritizing (total)
4. Develop quantifiable success metrics
5. Review resource contraints and select the best project portfolio
6. Do project implementation
7. Review project underways
8. Review compared to success metrics
Innovation is risk, but risk can be managed. Companies that don't innovate die, so it's not like "not doing it" is an option. I've seen so many bad examples of poor management here, basicly things get started ad hoc based on personal initiatives with no proper review, planning, success criteria or anything. On the other hand, I've seen a few companies that have overdone it though, where the red tape is killing it too. But most companies really crap out on two things: Highly unrealistic business plans which nobody gets smacked for, and starting off projects with little to no regard on "where do we really want to go and is this project taking us in the right direction?".
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
It's not surprising someone who looks at the bottom line a lot is unhappy with innovation which provides sporadic returns. Innovation is often an unknown fiscal endeavour whereas reducing, reusing and recycling your technology -- and sometimes jumping on the popular bandwagons -- is often more fiscally viable. That's why there are layers underneath to the CEO to manage such things. What's next, an article stating 100% of CFOs are not happy with innovation.
Bean counters are sucking the salt out of life. We all need a roof overhead and food on the table, but owning the biggest house, car, bling, etc., does not make us happy. Look at Hollywood if you don't believe it.
Fame, fortune, yet many spend most of their life on a head-shrinker's couch or in the bottom of a pill bottle.
We've yet to come up with a good alternative for capitalism, but I certainly understand why many have turned away from it.
I know that reading TFA is not a prerequisite for commenting on stories on /., hell it is often regarded as being gay or some other form of highbrow elitism. Those who do it are regarded as know-it-all wise-asses who are flaunting it at the rest of unwashed /. crowds. Even among those who submit the stories and those who push them to the front pages it is now regarded fashionable not to read the text in the original articles but instead make wildly biased 'educated' guesses colored with personal preferences, while trying to describe to the rest of us what it is that the article is insinuating.
Having said all of the above, I actually RTFAd, so sue me.
The article mentions that 46% of the 2,468 senior executives surveyed worldwide said that they are satisfied with the return on their innovation spending. The rest are dissatisfied with the returns.
This has nothing to do with innovation itself, this has to do with the fact that often what is supposed to be innovation (something that is supposed to provide the company with better processes, systems, business and generate income or reduce spending) in reality does nothing of the kind. Often people push their ideas not because they want to innovate, but because they want to spend or they want to do something that is not profitable for the company but satisfies their own interests.
The article is about waste of money and it is not about CEOs who "don't like" innovations.
Move along, this is nothing else but the usual 'non-tech' CEO bashing. (Oh, I am not against bashing, but only when there is actually a good point to make. There is nothing of the kind here.)
You can't handle the truth.
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For me innovation has just become a Microsoft buzzword. I cringe everytime I hear it, but luckily I don't read Microsoft groupthink too often.
See the problem with your childish analogy yet?
I think you have it mixed up. The goal of running a business is to make money. If innovating helps you make money, then that's great. If it doesn't help make money, then there's little point for the business to take part in it. Innovating can give you an edge with the competition, but it's an endless cycle, so the edge is often short-lived.
Reality check 101: a CEO's job is to maximize profits. That's all, folks.
So anything that doesn't bring-in a fat bottom-line right now can't stand a chance.
I thought the "goal" of eating was to, well, not die. And I didn't think living had a goal, really. I think you're confusing goal with final outcome...
That roof and food are your bottom line, chum. At the end of the day, you too count beans.
Hollywood is almost never a good example of anything. I really don't think their problems are centered around money, though it is a significant contributor. The hours are horrible, I was listening to a show where some guy made a documentary suggesting that the hours be brought down to twelve hours as a hard limit because longer days are a health threat, hurts marriages and so on. As you might have seen, the culture & gossip in Hollywood can be vicious too.
In large companies, "innovation" is defined as a VP deciding to switch from one multi-million dollar commercial software package to another, in order to look like something is happening. Large companies tend not to trust their in-house staff to come up with anything. This is why I now work for small companies that can't afford to ignore their employees.
This basically all sounds like, "give me free money."
Most people say that in one form or another. This is one of the many ways in which CEOs do.
We did nott get to where we are today without failures. We learn from our failures. "Risk-free innovation" is a fantasy, pure and simple.
Don't just blame bean counters. Blame the "Me-Too" group. If Joe Sixpack gets a new Quad processor PC because he's good at writing multi-threaded applications that speed up the process and someone in the group complains that they didn't get it too... you have a problem that most companies will just say, "Fine! Stick with your single processor machines!" Because it would be too expensive and stupid to upgrade all the developers.
Obviously, that's just an example. But people who innovate usually do things different than other people. They can sometimes take a longer lunch and skip breaks. They might leave their PC and go for a walk around the building to think about what the problem is (sometimes it helps.) Lo and behold, in steps the "Me-Too" and demands that they get to leave their station at will (to go sleep in the cafeteria.) Or they want to take a long lunch and get to leave early. Then the bean counter's step in.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
No. They eat to live with defecation necessary to clear the tract. The other reasons are a layer after the first is satisfied. Go truly hungry for a while and see if you care if the food tastes good or is presented properly.
You also have the sequence incorrect. Need is the driver of creativity which produces invention. Apes trade things for food (sex) with no invention involved. So no, at the most rudimentary level the CEO came before creativity.
No budget to work with. Few quality (i.e. expensive) employees. No wonder they are dissatisfied with innovation.
If they want innovation, they need to understand not all ideas pay out. It's not unlike venture capital - it takes money to make money and not everything hits paydirt.
As long as CEOs keep wanting to do this crap on the cheap, they will be dissatisfied with the results.
...and it's usually sitting behind the CIO's desk.
What this is telling us is that we have good ideas, but we're not realizing gains from them.
Well, some obvious culprits:
* Poor identification of what ideas will be the ones to generate returns. In a number of large company, the CIO is personally making these decisions, based on proposals that bubble up through several layers of management. That means the person with the idea isn't advocating it, and there are also a number of people in the process who's primary responsibility isn't being innovative. Ideas get trapped by not being someone's "pet project" or having a poor advocate.
* Poor processes. Quite a lot of organizations have significant bureaucratic oversight of project process. This can limit the pace at which innovation is delivered (witness the revolution in Agile development). The main conculusion is that the CIO will get more, better, faster by NOT making the process as burdensome, and even trading off some of his "certainty" about the results.
* Poor projections for truly innovative products. A lot of "management" managers, who don't really understand technology, make decisions based on cost vs/ expected returns. This means you're insisting on seeing an expected return and an expected cost up front, before the project even starts. These are estimates, meaning they're largely guesses. And while this is necessary to some degree, putting too much emphasis on "the bottom line" at this point can be counterproductive. Notably, it weights towards "similar to known"/"safe" projects, rather than game breaking opportunities where "well, we don't really know what the return will be" projects.
* Poor planning. Many large organizations budget on a yearly cycle, and will lay out the budgets based on the current backlog of products. This can be very difficult to change. Which means the average idea sits 6 months before the next budget cycle before it even possibly gets into next year's plan, and even then it's not clear when it will be delivered. There's no leftover budget for someone to recognize "this is a HUGE idea and we need to act now to capture this opportunity." Too many people treat the software industry like the construction industry, where you can "plan and forget" for the year. A lot of companies compound this by making managers and exec's objectives tied to specific projects--now you have people incentivized to deliver on "the plan" and ignore new ideas, even if they think the new idea is more important/better than the planned project.
Just right. Mod parent +6 Insightful please.
"I think this line is mostly filler"
Thank god/evolution I'm not an ape! :)
That's great if you're trying to figure out what to do with your life. But if I'm sitting in management trying to figure out how much of my budget to allocate to innovation, I won't be the one doing or feeling the "process and the effort". Technically I'm not even interested in the deliverables, because I'm not a end user and scientific research is something the rest of the world can do. I just want to know how much this will affect my bottom line - if it makes or saves money.
If I go out to the store and buy milk and bread, do I really care how the "process and the effort" was for the people producing it? Nah, I want to know how it hits my wallet. And maybe something about the quality of the product. Perhaps even if there was child labour or animal testing or whatever involved. But it's not like I'm going to take a real personal interest in the process and effort. At least in higher management you're just as detached, employee satisfaction is statistics on turnover and salary requirements, in other words money.
Most people take pride in and value the work that they do. But that's very different from what you value in deliverables from others. So yes, good point but I really don't think it applies here.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
If this is truly the case, come work for me for no paycheck.
Card carrying member of the all-or-nothing crowd? Some of us still value shades of grey. But I can suspend that momentarily.
While we're in the process of doing a root-canal on human dignity, what is it about human nature that connects such a worthless rejoinder directly to the kneecap? A lot of people in history have worked for no paycheck, and there's a name for that, although it's hard to get creative work out of people under those conditions.
Fast forward history from the primal snarl, the dilemma arises where one profit-oriented sweatshop industrialist finds himself undercut by an even more ruthless profit-oriented sweatshop industrialist. He needs an edge. Maybe even an idea. But where to get such a thing? He certainly can't produce one himself, that might cut into his ego-maintenance time. No, his only recourse is to shackle himself a golden goose, one of those notorious flakes who has not fully and properly internalized the value that life is all about money.
Or if not money, honor. For example, if I work a machine shop and lose my hand, I get compensation. If I work for the military and I lose my life, I get a flag. The military has a similar never-ending connundrum: how to recruit without paying people commensurate to the risk and sacrifice involved. Amp up the service and loyalty and nation-under-threat rhetoric. It works for business too. Just amp up the "it's all about money", or bare a fang while leering "come work for free", and play it up as a fair rejoinder. The rhetoric "it's all about money" does not speak to money, it speaks to subordination, and primal greeds satisfied by one person controlling another. Any person who goes around reminding others of their primal needs is all about control. I once witnesses a person purporting to be an angel investor who came into the meeting room and filled an entire white-board with the two words: FEAR and GREED. That was on there the whole time he spoke, and another week afterwards. We were too intimidated to erase it.
[i]Reality check 101: a CEO's job is to maximize profits. That's all, folks.
So anything that doesn't bring-in a fat bottom-line right now can't stand a chance.[/i]
I hope you realize the difference between the 2 statements you made, because it's important.
The CEO's job is to maximize returns for the shareholders.
This is DIFFERENT FROM a need to maximize that return for each quarter. In theory, if a CEO had an opportunity to underperform by 10% this quarter, but that would result in overperformance by 5% over the following 8 quarters, then he SHOULD do that. It's a profitable long-term investment which maximizes the total return to shareholders, even with reasonable discounting of the future returns.
Unfortunatly, many CEO's don't value the long term. And much of the problem is investors. There are huge reactions to current quarter results, and not a lot of value given to future investments. The way the system is structured, most CEO's are incentivized (and evaluated) on a "win now" framework. Like I said, I blame investors as much as CEO's for this, but there you are.
The CEO's need to get "a fat bottom-line right now" is NOT, in many cases, long-term profit maximizing.
I find it ironic that the same investors who reward short-term thinking are the same ones who complain in many cases about not being innovative.
Just so. And this is what makes America great.
Or so I'm told.
Breakfast served all day!
They need to stop fucking the little guy over. You start screwing employees out of their royalties or bonuses or benefits. You are going to see a lot less people innovating for these big ass corporations and end up making their own damn products on the side. Only to end up getting sued by every other corporation. This is the major problem with business today. There is too much suing going on for any innovation to go on. It seems to me like all the innovating goes on in colleges that were funded by the government. I am sure a lot of research being done is for our military.
Right now anything remotely interesting ends up getting sued out of business. I am tired of companies not learning how to adapt to new technology *especially web technology*
There is a whole world of innovation out there but the problem is that it costs too much whether it be money or the threat of getting sued out of existence...it is a huge risk now to start up your own business or even bring to the table innovative products to your own corporations.
I refer to office space a lot because a huge portion of it is true in business practices. If I make an effort to do my job plus try to save the company money...plus be innovative and I bring it up the ranks. Do you think I will compensated for that amazing job? Fuck no. You either get a miserable raise and/or a kick in the nuts.
Welcome to the corporate world of mass fuckery
When is ones time not their own? If your job is to stuff N widgets into boxes per hour, and it takes you 45 minutes, what business is it of anyone to tell you to stop using that 15 minutes figuring out to get it to 30?
Oh, let me guess, you're one of those jackasses under the delusion that employment is some sort of master / slave relationship. Here's a little reality check for the aspiring Lumbergh: The master is whoever costs more to replace.
Besides, the point of money is to fuck the hottest chicks, eat the best food, and die with the most toys, so this whining is counterproductive. If the employee and the CEO aren't on the same page about getting more money, you've got bigger problems than IT costs.
I can think of a couple of local companies that were started as a result of the founder's post-grad work. A product was developed, found a market and the company got big. Unfortunately, no more (or at least not much) innovation happened. The company will keep going until the market goes away and then the company will cease to exist.
The trouble is that too many companies last too long. They don't innovate and their mere existance prevents the birth of new companies that do innovate. Microsoft springs immediately to mind.
you mean putting people in charge that don't understand a damn thing about your companies product doesn't breed innovation?
It is just me or does this article have a high "So what?" factor?
The point of INVESTMENTS, because that's what the topic really is about, is the Return on Investment (ROI). Wow, never heard THAT one before.
And not an abundance of IDEAS (which really are just thoughts everybody can have, so why wouldn't it be in abundance?) but the right (project) methodologies and the funding to carry out said ideas. Well, given that the majority of IT projects are not written off as "success" (however they wish to define it), I'm not reading anything new either.
Oh, and while talking about IDEAS: they are certainly NOT to be confused with GOOD ideas that can actually effectively and efficiently address a certain issue in a certain environment, and with at least a conceptual planning to realize that good idea in the right context to tackle said issues. As everybody can write a paper, but not everybody can write a paper with a significant/original subject, sound (carried out) methodology, and a well written report of all that and have it go through peer reviews and accepted for publication.
As for weird short speech about goals being overrated: goals are by definition the purpose of the thing you do. So to say something as ridiculous as goals being overrated, and enjoying the process and effort is a bit silly. Process of what? Effort in what? To achieve an objective, a goal. That's what. People eat with survival as goal. You apparently eat food because you simply enjoy eating (thus your goal would be consuming something for the sake of feeling good) and apparently while not being hungry (thus your goal is not to still your hunger).
Goals are not overrated at all, perspectives are.
"innovation innovation innovation innovation" - everyone is repeating it like parrots. you cant just innovate every f**kin month. even not every f**kin year. before they even start widely using an innovation that is made, management starts crapping around about a 'new innovation'. maybe thats because they are actually not adding any real value to the company and feel like they are doing it when they do the innovation blabbering.
Read radical news here
This is truly ironic. I think someone said above that the CEOs can't see past the 13 week window, and this has been exactly right in almost every place that I have worked for. This was especially prevalent in the last place I was employed, where the company started off as THE innovator of the products that they sold, but failed to improve to this day, and now they are sending emails to their technical support people asking them to report any "customer attrition" concerns to their direct manager, so that sales can apply the full court press on these customers that are shopping around. The company has an influx of hundreds of millions of dollars in money to use to innovate and create, but somehow the money keeps going elsewhere and the company stands mired in quicksand. As the CEO takes vacations to New Zealand...
This is not a good thing. We need more blue sky deep research - research with NO profit motive - its where the real ground-breaking stuff happens. Keep science away from bean-counters. They will eviscerate it the same way they gutted the Arts and Humanities.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Don't like where you work? Then quit bitching about it and find a job you like.
Because I'm sure your attitude isn't well hidden from your employers.
Subject says it all.
Then pay for it yourself. Seriously, become a CEO in a company, or start your own company. Then you can throw money around however you want, but you'll be responsible for the consequences.
The biggest obstacle in IT innovation is the fact that so many IT departments are overseen by accounting departments. If you can't create a concrete quantifiable measurement of the impact a system change will have, then you won't get approval for it from the bean counting morons upstairs. Not everything is concretely measurable. For example, how do you accurately quantify the effects of a change that greatly increases employee morale before the change has been made? I'd say doing that is a crap shoot at best. Does that mean the change isn't worthwhile? No.
On top of that, corporations that measure department success based on their impact on the bottom line always look down at the IT department because they see it as an expense. What doesn't seem to click in their minds is the fact that the success of their entire business often hinges on the functionality of their IT systems. Nobody likes to acknowledge that until an IT system stops working and the whole business grinds to a halt. You'd think people would be more willing to invest in something that's so critical to success in today's world.
This is BS. Total BS. Everybody really *KNOWS* what drives innovation - creative, intelligent and capable people taking risks, preferably expecting some personal benefit from the risk. The payoff need not be financial, but there must be a payoff.
CEO's and other high-level executives are paid to pump the stock price, and the easiest way to do so is through liquidation of assets (layoffs, selloffs, attrition, or the occasional stupid acquisition). Most executives are non-technical, financial managers. They are risk averse. In America at least, innovation is basically dead except for startups. There is a reason, for instance, that big Pharma and the medical device manufacturers are suffering. They are dominated by risk averse individuals who won't, for their careers, accept failure. Failure is how people learn. Failure can be an indication of risk taking. Unfortunately, failure is also how tort lawyers make money and how executives get canned.
What *possible* incentive does a career scientist, engineer or IT contributor have to take risk in a large organization? The payout is non-existent (except for individual gratification, and this skews the projects on which someone is willing to invest their discretion in choosing), and taking the risk could result in career suicide.
We keep working so hard to ship all our jobs overseas then these pricks want to say they are dissatisfied with innovation?
It's no wonder innovation in the US is lacking, severely. I mean, seriously - how many people do you know in the US who have a job where innovation is even allowed? Not many - not many at all. Actually, not many of the people I know even work in information or research fields anymore - all their jobs have been shipped overseas and filled by H1-B visa workers who will work for nearly half the money.
Another decade at this rate and the only thing America will be is a consumerist state - how we will all be consumers when there are 0 jobs here held by Americans is beyond me, though.
Like the summary says, lack of ideas are not a problem. In fact, too many ideas are a problem in a large company. There is no satisfactory way to process all the ideas of all the people in the company and pick out the good from the bad. Everyone thinks their idea is good, but most are usually wrong. And a large company, if they don't have an R&D budget to devote to such things, just doesn't have the risk tolerance for trying untested things.
That is why new small companies will always arise, and when successful, take the place of old companies. People with the REALLY good ideas are generally smart enough to see them through from the ground up, and accomplish something that no large company is even remotely flexible enough to achieve. This is also why innovation of this sort tends to happen only in the most business-friendly countries.
others to do?
The average CEO makes 400 times what their "innovators" do. So, take a cut, apply those dollars toward a return, then grow their salary by percentage of new revenue from innovation, rather than cutting costs.
Blogging because I can...
"The goal of innovation is to make or save money, and IT should never lose sight of that central fact."
Within the rather thin, anemic context of profit-seeking enterprises, yes.
It's been apparent for years, however, that profit-seeking behavior presents one of the greatest obstructions to innovation, whose purpose is to actually help people (and not just "enterprises") to improve their conditions and lives. From proprietary software and web services EULAs, the DMCA and abuse of its takedown notice systems, incessant pointless copyright extensions, to incompetent patent granting system, you don't have to go far to at least reasonably wonder if "the bottom line" is failing to help innovation more than innovation os failing to help generate profits.
There's a LOT more to life outside the grubbing business world, but judging by the prevalence of people making misleading statements like this, it's easy to forget.
The goal of innovation is to make or save money, and IT should never lose sight of that central fact.
Even if IT doesn't, the customer can. I have one customer...a government entity...that I've worked pretty much the same way I'd treat a private side customer, with an eye toward efficiency and the bottom line. It's bought me nothing there. They spent a million dollars to take a working application developed by three people and give it to a team of 7 from another company to maintain. No fail over, they won't let it integrate with any other applications and, the final insult, they took over our server to host it. The customer will carve off services and outsource them, even if it costs more and the service isn't as good. Sometimes it's the same people maintaining the system, just working for a different company.
Told them this year that I'm done. Can't do it anymore, it's just so frustrating. You try to do the right thing, work hard finding better ways to automate a process and they crap on all your research and best efforts in favor of something that costs more and will never work. I've seen them waste tens of millions on the same mistakes, over and over. Ironically they're very appreciative and don't want me to leave. Still haven't figured that out.
Dissatisfaction is a two-way street in some IT shops. Before you start tap dancing on the IT folks for a lack of innovation, maybe try talking to them, just to make sure that you've addressed the barriers management might be erecting that hinder a more successful relationship.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
"At the end of the day all that creativity".. Who else is sick to death of this expression (although I did find the article fascinating!)
"This sig does not contain any SCO code."
We beg to differ. In particular we noted the term "not", which is in our code. You are also infringing with individual characters, the nature and place of which we will not disclose until in court.
Our lawyers will be in contact with you.
D. McBride
Change wikipedia, change the world!
s /158/toeic-definitions.php
Retroactively redefining words is very handy for those who wish to manipulate public opinion. If one changes the words meaning there isw a period of time where the new word has the associations of the old before the public gets wise.
One example of this is the term "ethnic cleansing". Ethnic cleansing used to be better known as Genocide. And they even got away with it for a while until the U.N. officially married the terms back together again. It took several years though.
Another good example is when the Nazi party changed it's name to avoid certain obvious problems. There are even certain political extremist groups --ahem-Moral majority--Ahem-- That change their name about every 5 years or so to keep ahead of public opinion.
What they are calling "innovation" here is NOT the original definition of the word.
Real, which is to say unmanipulatable, dictionaries such as Webster define it more or less as something new. http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/Innovation Much more like the definition of invention as used here.
If this were true terms like ideological innovation and scientific innovation would make no sense.
The term "to innovate" as used here used to be called "to capitalize on" Capitalize has become a technical business term but the general definition used to be more like "to create profit from" http://www.english-test.net/toeic/vocabulary/word
Capitalize as used here is again a word with negative connotations.
The general source of this retroactive reinvention of the term is so far as I can tell, Microsoft. If in Microsoft's public statements one substitutes the term they begin to make a lot more sense. If this is done, by their own statemant, Microsoft does not make new things, they capitalize on other people's ideas.
Perhaps this article's purpose is to remarry the terms. Much like the U.N.'s action on genocide/ethnic cleansing, but I felt clarification was in order.
It's what I do for living, though it's rather hard to make a business case that figuring out the decay rate of craters on Triton is going to enrich anyone financially. With hope though, it will enrich my fellow scientists and lead to a broader understanding of the solar system and our place it it. Can you put a price on that?
Turning the question around, would you have asked Max Plank for a business case for quantum physics, 50 years before it was used to invent the transistor?
Simon
... innovation causes change.
Change requires ongoing management attention.
Ongoing management attention interferes with their afternoon golf games.
Have gnu, will travel.
the industry has abused this word to the point it's meaningless bullshit meant to obscure the fact that no, there are no new ideas here.
I will have a sig when the market demands it.
I really wish that more of them would care about a job well done and helping humanity...
If I go out to the store and buy milk and bread, do I really care how the "process and the effort" was for the people producing it? Nah, I want to know how it hits my wallet.
This post is the single most alien thing I've ever read on slashdot. How can you possibly not wonder about that? You even go so far as to glorify your own ignorance of the world around you?
Everything will be taken away from you.
For a moment I thought this was a joke headline.
No duh, I mean that's the job of CEOs, to lead their flock into profit-land, so of course "they're dissatisfied with innovation." Pretty much choose anything that you wish were faster, more efficient, or improved, and then you can say that you're dissatisfied with it.
the term for changing a words meaning is bastardization. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox- a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&hs=x5X&defl=en&q= define:bastardization&sa=X&oi=glossary_definition& ct=title
The term for deliberately acting to obscure the truth is known as lying.
http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=lying
It would be reasonable to assume therefore that the people who do this could accurately be called "Lying Bastards"
Motels did not use to have soap in the rooms.
Imagine today, a hotel that didn't offer little bars of soap.
that's an innovation, that only COST money..
and continues to do so today...
is it a bad innovation or a necassary one?
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The article is a bit self-limiting because it pertains only to IT related innovation. Yet, some of the points raise may just as well be extended to other technology domains.
My experience says that for the vast majority of companies, business finances overwhelm every other facet of the business. And that is not at all unexpected - if you want to remain alive, you have to watch where your money goes and comes from. However, going beyond this conventional logic, I've also noticed that even well established companies, with deep pockets, never seem to get out of that logic at all. Sadly, the motivation isn't to spend today to incubate for tomorrow, but more like, use today and re-package the same stuff for tomorrow so that the upfront cost may be saved and the lust for instant gratification (by the CEO, Investors etc.) may be satiated. The business focused organization deals strictly on numbers and innovates by mergers and acquisitions.
I'm not sure I agree with their definition of 'innovation' (again perhaps they refer to a strictly IT perspective which I don't claim to understand). True innovation takes time, determination and a vision. While money may condense time and allow for a more determined effort, vision requires initiative. (read: sticking your neck out because of a true passionate desire to realize your idea). Most business types don't want to risk their lucrative careers/bonuses on that - so in comes the bureaucracy to sustain this 'incremental' model. No surprise that most large companies/governments/entities suffer from bureaucracies that destroy initiative. There is little that bureaucrats hate more than innovation, especially innovation that produces better results than the old routines.
Improvements always make those at the top of the heap look inept. Who enjoys appearing inept?
Let's see: CEOs fire dedicated long-term IT employees who understand the business, hire the cheapest offshore subs they can find, and then act surprised that they're not getting top-notch work. Who would have guessed?
Interesting point that you make. In the field of economics and political economy, though, innovation is capitalising on a new idea or process. Mr Joe Citizen might be the inventor the assembly line (or perhaps the idea of the assembly line). Mr Henry Ford, was the innovator when he applied the idea to car manufacturing (please note I'm not suggesting Ford didn't invent the assembly line as well - just making a point).
Words only have meaning within a context. Richard Rorty wrote about this quite a bit. Revisionist semantics happens when you re-interpret a text based on a different (normally more modern) definition of a word. This article was written in the context of modern economics and used a modern economics understanding of the word "innovation".
For someone not from an economics or political economy background it is entirely probable that a reader might think this is a manipulation of the language. However, the use of innovation in this context has been around for most of the 20th century (certainly since the days of Schumpeter).
Revisionist semantics IS like revisionist history - but this isn't revisionist semantics. It is the normal process of language.
I come from a LAN down under
Where the packets flow and routers chunder
for cheaper European and Japanese CEOs who work for 1/20th the pay and think that growing the business is more important than fancy presentations that mean nothing about "innovations".
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The guy not only has to bring the balls, the gloves, the bats, the bases and the other players, but advertise, bring the audience, give them free beers and entertain them all at the same time, just so they can all be successful and keep their own jobs? Is the innovator the only person who has a job to remain competitive and increase productivity?
I used to love the "innovative project meeting" where all the *really* difficult tasks, like the transition and integration you mentioned, were assigned to (out of 12 people) the innovative technical leader. Because they were the only people who could be bothered to understand it... Unless, of course, it included sitting on the lap of a CxO while training, hand holding some backward manager, or walking around spreading gossipy news of the "new" system.
That is why glacial organizations and the people stuck within suck, if not now, soon enough.
Businesses need new ideas to remain successful, competitive and efficient, and the demand for innovation is accelerating. The case for creative thinking software in business: Improve creative thinking productivity at a fundamental level throughout a business and benefit from the resulting explosive growth in new thinking, new ideas, innovation and change! CompXpress Creator Studio(TM) creative thinking software for business enhances creative thinking productivity on demand. Creator Studio helps individuals and teams create new ideas for new products and services, new business solutions and innovations. Creator Studio helps business people everywhere harness the creative thinking power of their entire organization.
Wishing you many Great Ideas! The CompXpress Team
The goal of innovation is to make or save money, and IT should never lose sight of that central fact.
Well, no wonder so many CEOs are unhappy with the state of innovation in the USA. They are, once again, utterly clueless. Only a finance guy could make such an, I hate to say it, but such an ignorant statement as that.
It's shocking to me to see how few of the major innovations have been made based on their rate of return. I'm guessing... zero? Was the invention of the integrated circuit a money thing? No, it couldn't have been since it was done on a US government cost+ contract for NASA. It was done to save weight, save energy, and vastly improve reliability. Did we invent A/C to save money or to make high rise office buildings tenable in the summer? Did we figure out how to spray paint to save money or to improve surface finish?
Tell me again what the vast majority of CEOs bring to the table to earn their hugely inflated salaries and benefits packages? Are they really stupid enough to think that saying IT is a profit center will make it so?
Innovation and entering or even creating new markets can lead to a company becoming defocused and stretched too thin when those new markets do not compliment its core competencies. Your software company would never consider entering the coal mining drilling rig market even if you came to your CEO with a proposal for the most safe and efficient coal mining drilling rig ever conceived, not even if he or she believed it.
Innovation within an existing market that your company dominates in marketshare can lead to market segmentation. If your company has 60% marketshare in the XYZ consumer software market, and no one else individually has more than 15%, coming out with radically innovative improvements (changes) to your product line may cause your customers to jump ship to your smaller competitors. Customers want steady, incremental improvement. This incremental improvement should be targeted at winning new sales to expand your marketshare, and take the wind out of the sales of your competitors. In many cases it may be cheaper to simply acquire your small competition outright and thereby add their marketshare to your own.
It may also be a poor business decision to innovate faster than the market demands, thereby playing your cards too soon. If you dominate your market, you would think long and hard about developing and releasing a product that improves on the state of the art by 10 years, when the market only demands a 1 year improvement. Dramatically increasing the state of the art in an established market you dominate likely will not produce revenue growth proportional to the cost of development, marketing, and release, compared to the 1 year advancement.
Businesses need new ideas to remain successful, competitive and efficient, and the demand for innovation is accelerating. The case for creative thinking software in business: Improve creative thinking productivity at a fundamental level throughout a business and benefit from the resulting explosive growth in new thinking, new ideas, innovation and change! CompXpress Creator Studio(TM) creative thinking software for business enhances creative thinking productivity on demand. Creator Studio helps individuals and teams create new ideas for new products and services, new business solutions and innovations. Creator Studio helps business people everywhere harness the creative thinking power of their entire organization.
Wishing you many Great Ideas! The CompXpress Team
Yes, a nation of managers who couldn't care less whether they're working for Nike, the car industry, the tobacco industry, or the weapon industry.
As long as the money keeps rolling in, they're doing their job and can sleep at night.
When you don't care about the product you're selling, how exactly do you motivate your staff? I hope you have a very long whip and a very strong hand...
and how long has that been true? It sure as heck wasn't when I was in school.
inovate is a term already in use. And usable within the the discipline in question for other things. An economic innovation would be something like money(arguably around since monkeys), double entry book keeping (~13th century) Or all those fine equations talked about in that "A Beautiful Mind" movie.
It would not be
Interestingly enough it is also the only definition in wikipedia, (the one where money can buy keystrokes which can buy definitions) which is downright suspicious. It was also not listed as such in the webster's section.
Most of the Google listings where I saw it in the capitalistic sense were pretty much tech oriented, which is a place where the origional definition is most certainly the most appropriate.
...the innovatores see CEOs making millions from their innovations, so that's a bit of a damper.
Job requirements:
Innovator: Constantly innovate under the threat of being replaced by college new hire.
CEO: Act like motherfucking asshole shitbag sociopath in all facets of life, and loot the company assets for a golden parachute when the sea of noobs can't innovate like a solid core of experienced designers.
Fuck CEOs. Fuck MBAs. Fuck business schools which are nothing but training grounds that reduce once human people into to beings of pure, concentrated assholium. Even Ayn Rand would kick these modern leeches right in the nuts.
Watch that stupid Donald Trump show. At the end of an episode, if you don't want to drop an Ebola bomb on the whole cast, you were not paying attention, or your brain has been overnumbed to accept it as good and nice nice.
Intense and interesting spread "54% of CEOs Dissatisfied With ... "97% of Innovators Dissatisfied with CEOs"
.... Also,
... the real measure of success is never monetary.
....
... about war, "Practical Experience" and education value related to real (non-monetary)
... allot of money, then you are a BM person, not a leader or genius.
....
... assigning a Venture Architect to every project/program/service... not a BM.
...). (2) germane inclusive practical application experience. (3) strong venture/mission community collaboration skills. (4) the ability to [a] detect obscured implicit knowledge, [b] design atypical synergistic relationships/processes, and [c] define manageable mission complexity components and delegate to a specific venture collaborative community. (5) verifiabl, measurable, and vetted gainful consensus decision performance leading to mission success.
Innovation"
and the problem is Businesses Management (BM) of The Almighty Science/Technology Budget.
Invention is a tangible result, which was intuitively created by the actions of a genius.
Innovation is the introduction of something new [make changes] into anything established.
Leadership is about vision, prescience, experience, and the genius to create real measurable success.
BM is about tangible, measurable, results by a very smart person, but probably not a genius.
CEO/CFO/CIO/COO/CTO/BSO... are for the most part BM oriented and educated. Most (not all)
CEO/CFO... are not creative innovative inventive geniuses. CEO/CFO... are down to earth
practical dogmatist that mentally max-out on concepts/ideas at the "addition and subtraction"
level of abstraction and thought. IMO: Business Management and CEO/CFO... are a perfect match.
The Almighty Science/Technology Budget (again, IMO) should be managed by CEO/CFO....
Regretfully, without leadership "The Almighty Science/Technology Budget" can be very
foolishly and quickly squandered by a company, group, government
cultural/society risk-averse intransigence, which adversely impacts internal
a/o external business processes is always a major co-variate cause for failure.
Invention, innovation, and leadership cohesion and consensus are all required for success.
Community/corporate culture and the BM CEO/CFO... cohesion and support are required.
The top goal must always be real measurable success.
In business/government... money lost and saved is the real measurement standard of success.
In science, art, society/humanity, relationships
Innovation/Invention and associated ideas/concepts are never the obstacle a/o failure cause.
Failure is a human expectation, preparation, and implementation deficiency; So, the BM person
(I think) is always the cause of failure. I have known and read about BM persons that have
science, art, and engineer PhD degrees, but little or no practical experience in any science,
technology, art
Note: Practical experience is required for leadership and insight into reality. Ask USGrant, RELee,
GCPatton
measurable success.
THAT WAS A TEST: If you thought war cost
Rather then going into more distracting detail
Top-heavy screw-up a/o do nothing BM is a big unnecessary waste of money globally.
CEO/CFO/CIO/COO/CTO/BSO...President/King/... excuse-management and spin-failure needs to end.
If you want Innovation/Business success consider electing, hiring
Define, Venture Architect: A nexus professional with (1) extensive understanding of the projects "Venture Charter" funding and requirements (in science, research, development, technology, engineering, finance, services, and/or
Each business and program VA should have their own VA Resources Officers (while the "Venture Charter" exist): Business Manager (BRM), Financial Manager (FRM), Human Resources Managers (HRM).
Pay and benefits based on
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
And I assume you do? I assume that every time you buy milk you do a detailed analysis of not just the company but the exact branch/location that supplied that milk. In turn you also go and visit them so as to interview the employees in person. Right?
It has been true probably longer than you think - but again only in the worlds of economic theory and political economy (which might not necessarily been what you were taught at school). The first person I am aware that studied the economic drivers of technological change was Joseph Schumpeter in the early 20th century. He argued that technological advancement was driven not so much by the generation of ideas - but the economic exploitation of them. "Innovation" was the successful economic exploitation of an idea - not the invention of an idea.
There is a Wikipedia article on Schumpeter, but if you want to get a better a idea of his work and ideas try Schumpeter and technical change (by A. Heerje), Evolutionary economics: applications of Schumpeter's ideas (edited by H. Hanusch) or Schumpeter and the political economy of change (by D. L. McKee). Of course anything by Schumpeter is also worth reading (though very dry)
A point to note - specific fields use everyday words in different contexts. A couple of weeks ago there were people on Slashdot arguing that people should accept that in the IT world kilo means 1024, not 1000. IT isn't alone in this. Economics and political economy make use of ordinary words in very specific contexts as well - innovation is one of them. This was an economics article and I think the use of the word innovation was correct.
Anyway - it has been an interesting debate. I'm glad you raised your point - I've been meaning to discuss the meaning of "innovation" for a while, but rarely make the effort to post. Bringing the issue up so directly gave me the impetus to get off my arse and put in my 2 cents.
Cheers
Rockin' Az
I come from a LAN down under
Where the packets flow and routers chunder
Look at MERL: a group of freakish smart and talented researchers creating some very innovative stuff. What does ME do? Change it from real research to "build stuff we can sell today from this list of parts". Don't get me wrong, applied research in critical but not at the cost of killing the place where those parts are invented. And don't expect top tier researchers to happily accept what many would see as a poor career move. MERL wasn't perfect but it was impressive.
Moral of story: Once great doesn't mean always great. MERL loses and BAE, WPI, Harvard, Disney and JPL win. Some of the ex-Merl staff will go on to invent things that will directly decrease ME's profit and only ME is to blame. Again, MERL wasn't perfect but they had some sick talent that's now cast to the four winds.
bfcc9da4f2e1d313c63cd0a4ee7604e9
"The goal of innovation is to make or save money, and IT should never lose sight of that central fact."
I tend to disagree, based on that other 'fact' that capitalism is a means by which society can grow, that is to say, money is the means and not the end. There's plenty of fantastic ideas in the OS community which help us as IT people and are subsequently exploited by business looking for free IP rides. Sounds like CEO's just want it all.
Raiding pension funds, getting outrageous "bonuses", cutting worker salaries, firing Americans to hire foreigners, gutting healthcare, "letting people go" on the eve or retirement, "downsizing" and generally making America a really lousy place to be a worker!
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
There are myriad things I wonder about. Farming is not on the list. Not only is it very much a solved problem, but it's such an awful industry to work in that people by the millions have taken the first opportunity to leave it behind in favor of factories (even sweatshops), and I just don't want to know any more depressing details than I already do.
Heresy! Please turn yourself in to the hipster police.
Problem with innovation is the same as for other any action taken, it must give a return to be worth the expense of resources.
VirtualWorldsHub.com - News, forums, resources
Good ideas are lacking.
The problem with most CEO's is that they think ideas are a commodity that they can just generate with more people. Google has it right though, good ideas come from a select group of people. If this CEO just lets groups come up with ideas through group think, then he this is probably why he isn't satisfied with innovation.
If ideas and innovation were easy, it wouldn't have taken so long for us to fly, create electricity, lights, etc. But CEO's are actually very easy to come by...
And invention without risk promieses no financial return.
CEOs don't like risk. They do like guaranteed competitive profit for free.
--
make install -not war
If this is truly the case, come work for me for no paycheck.
Hmmm. I've think I've contracted with you before, Mr. Itsinthemail.
Table-ized A.I.
The goal of running a business is to make money.
No, the goal of a business is to have a fun, interesting and worthwhile life. Money is just an, albeit important, tool to that end.
---
It's not piracy, it's sharing. Didn't your parents teach you to share?
After the founders have died or left the company, the people who wind up running the show are usually worthless leaches who only get the position by looking good to shareholders and bending over for the banks that really run the company.
...just don't come whining back to us researchers when your product roadmap dries up because you consider "innovation" unnecessary overhead!
"I'm an old-fashioned type of guy. I worship the Sun and Moon as gods. And fear them."
Your witty riposte has run headlong into reality: IT interns (well, software dev) get paid.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
I am not saying you and your coworkers have these types of inadequacies -- but it appears your management has had these types of experiences.
Every mans' island needs an ocean; choose your ocean carefully.
What i find worrying about this, is that these CEO's seem to think it's part of their job to be in the loop on such small issues.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
When you risk everything to make a new application (for, what else?) Windows, you run the risk of it going up in smoke when Microsoft puts the bone to you. Thus, angel investors for such projects have been hard to find for a couple of decades.
:>
And if you're going to do it on any other platform, you have to MAKE the entire platform, a'la iPod, iPhone, etc. Not cheap.
So thanks to the monopoly, we all sit and watch nothing new happen. Not my fault. I've not admin'ed a Windows box this century. I quit cold-turkey...you can too.
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
A while back, I read a quote (who I can't remember who to give credit to - Richard Stallman?) and it basically talked about the life cycle of a company. It starts off with a bunch of enthusiastic employees who have an idea. They are working because they believe in the idea and that they can succeed. When the company becomes successful, it reaches a point where the founders have to make a decision - do they continue with the development or manage the company. Most choose to hire SUITS to manage the company.
Wuth the SUITs running the company, the focus shifts from building the best product using the best ideas to making the most return on the dollar to the investor. The people who thrived on the initial growth and excitement become stifled and leave. After a while, there's nothing left but SUITs in the company and it flounders on..
> Or if not money, honor. For example, if I ...
When asked in a interview why they still do it, Kieth Richards of the Rolling Stones said, "Don't ferget about the cute birds up front and all the free beer you can drink."
If they get eaten, it's by bigger dinosaurs. Meanwhile, they're crushing the tiny little herbivores under their enormous stump-like feet by the dozens.
Even if they're slow, the only things that can really take down the biggest dinosaurs are old age, starvation, and lightning.
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
"Goals are over rated. Some of us still value the process and the effort."
The problem is not with goals, it's with the market ** ducks **. The truth is if profit was not such a factor, many creative and great ideas would finally come to fruition, the problem is we don't have infinite resources. I'd like to be the first to say that: Our quest for profit distorts and also hinders our quest for progress in some areas as much as it helps in others.
"The goal of innovation is to make or save money, and IT should never lose sight of that central fact."
I would think that the goal of innovation is to innovate, reguardless wether it makes or saves money. Just look at the money dumped into cancer research. Are they saying that a cure would loose them money, therefore any innovation that takes away their research dollars would be an expense and therefore the cure should not come to market and it will be "locked up" off the market?When is ones time not their own? When someone else is paying you for that time. If your job is to stuff N widgets into boxes per hour, and it takes you 45 minutes, what business is it of anyone to tell you to stop using that 15 minutes figuring out to get it to 30? It depends, but more than likely, it is your employer's business and they would prefer for the hour they paid you for that they get N+whatever you can get in during a 1 hour time span.
I also agree that goals rarely compare with an enjoyable process. To die with the most toys you must be careful not to break them (or spend them in this case) thus removing any joy in using them (spending it). In order to attain more you must give away something. I would rather go through life enjoying it by doing interesting and spiritually rewarding things. I believe that if we think on this a bit we will realize that that is why we toil. We want to create a society where we can pursue or spiritual needs and reduce the amount of our lives that we must devote to simply surviving. "For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" (Mt. 16:26) Yeah, that sounds about right.
Be as you would have the world become.
Innovate, bring in or save the company millions... have the same paycheck. Watch the CEO cash out millions in stock options.
You'd think they'd figure out that the problem isn't the lack of innovation, it's the lack of incentives to innovation.
Mostly, if you innovate and make/save the company money -- your only real reason these days is to help the company make enough money to repair the bleeding that is happening elsewhere throughout the organization due to weak management. Not mis-management, just weak.
On top of that, the sales staff selling your innovative product or service will typically make somewhere around 3X your salary.
This swing to giving the benefits/incentives derived from a new "innovative" product or service started in the late 60's in the U.S. (The best Engineers were "heros" and lionized in biographical data and touted as "important" to the company in public documentation back then...)
Today, the incentives to innovate only lie in leaving the company and selling your wares yourself, which seems like "The American Way". But it wasn't, many years ago.
Three to four decades ago, an engineer would pitch an "innovative" idea to the boss, with no expectation that they could keep the technological idea to themselves -- and the boss would actually UNDERSTAND it (that's important too, and more rare these days than it should be). If it were sound business to do so, the company would form a strategy and give the engineer an appropriate budget and tight timeline to get it built so they could take it to market.
And here's where the big differences start: If the project/product were successful, the Engineer who created it could reasonably expect a significant bonus, a very large one, and in many cases it would push them toward an almost "tenured" position within the company, and they'd be asked to do it again.
Today, the engineer gets his/her small piece of the bonus "plan" money, no matter who made the product/service that made or saved the corporation money, and watches the salespeople sell it a huge profit, much of which goes in the sales staff's pocket.
As an anecdotal way to "prove" this, look at the play "Death of a Salesman". Seen any sales people in that dire of straights today? Or are the ones you work with driving Cadillacs, Hummers, and living in houses about three times the price of your own?
One step further... how many millions has your CxO team made this year alone? If you're working for a public company, the SEC filings tell the tale. One million? Five? Ten? What will you make if you create the absolute best, most INNOVATIVE product ever made in your industry and do it through your company? Will you get a nice plaque and an atta-boy? Will you get a free dinner out on the town? Will you even see $1000 for your efforts?
Time to fix the INCENTIVES. People don't work for nothing, but most companies today have major problems with their incentives, if they want INNOVATION. CxO's, quit bitching... quit pulling millions of dollars of value out of the organization every year (learn to spend some money on pure R&D, and less on your lifestyle), and pull back some of the sales commission for paying the INNOVATOR directly.
+++OK ATH