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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.
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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 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
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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?