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."

Comments

97% of Innovators Dissastisfied with CEOs

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously.

Re:97% of Innovators Dissastisfied with CEOs

[Moraelin]

Do they really?

From my experience, in a lot of companies, they just don't want to innovate.

Doing the exact same thing with a computer application instead of a typewritten form isn't innovation. I'm sorry, it just isn't. An optimization that doesn't change the process at all, isn't it. Innovation is when you figure that you can turn the process upside down, and do things like they _weren't_ done before. When Ford figured out he'd use an assembly line instead of the old fashioned way, that was innovation. If Ford had just hired a faster courier boy to carry the forms from one beancounter to another (which is what a lot of computer apps really are today: just a faster way to do the exact same thing with the same people), that would be at most a straightforward optimization.

But when you want to shake up the process, you run into a lot of managers and egos which would be displaced by the new version. And there in a lot of places is where it fails. Try explaining to someone that his function will lose some power or prestige when your cool new system goes online, and see what kind of disproportionate resources he'll mobilize against it. Or try explaining to an old dog that he must learn new tricks, and see real resistance in action.

Remember, a lot of these are guys who know how to backstab, brownnose or make backroom deals, when they need to. In a lot of cases that's the only skill that got them there in the first place. If you think they'll just bend over and take it just because a techie figured out how to displace them, you may be surprised.

So what will happen in a lot of places is that they don't really want innovation. They want to keep their power and influence intact, and keep doing things like they were always done. With a computer, maybe, but nevertheless in the exact same way.

If the old process required that a form doesn't even have a registration number before a beancounter uses his stamp to give it one, don't be surprised if the requirement for the computer version says the record may not have an ID until the beancounter gives it one. That's his "power" there: he's the guy (or the boss of the guy) who gives registration numbers. He's not going to give that up. (Don't laugh, I've actually been in a team which implemented exactly that. We actually had a hidden unique ID, while the one assigned by the beancounter was only for display purposes.)

That's not innovation.

The budget is an excuse there. In a lot of places, the budget isn't even really calculated as in "what can we get for how much money", but a function of:

- corporate politics and petty wars and power grabs between heads of departments

- the product of some inflexible regulations (e.g., if in the last year you used only X dollars, you automatically get that. Whether there's actually an ROI in it or not. And a lot goes into _waste_, not R&R, because a penny saved is a penny cut next from your budget next year.)

- the result of some new boss pissing on everything to mark his territory (e.g., he'll show everyone who's boss by pointless half-baked restructuring games and budget reorganization, not because he actually studied what needs to be done with that money, but just to mark his new territory.) This goes especially well with the previous situation.

Etc.

Note that in the above I've said "many" or "a lot", but not "all". Yeah, there still are sane places. On the other hand, like Scot Adams put it recently, we seem to have harnessed the power of stupidity: at any given time, 90% of society's resources are pushed off a cliff by morons. It makes one wonder.

It's no surprise to me

[swamp boy]

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.

Re:It's no surprise to me

[rumblin'rabbit]

Ideas are - in some ways - the easy part. You also have to

• Make the ideas work within the existing framework.
• Show how to move from the old method to the new method.
• Convince people it's to their benefit.

Many innovators lack the above skills. They think that once they've performed some "innovation" their job is over, and thus get extremely frustrated when it's subsequently (and predictably) ignored, saying things like "innovation is given lip service". Of course, to make the above work, the researcher would have to get down and dirty and actually talk to the end users to find out about the real world.

Re:It's no surprise to me

[glueball]

If it's not a "safe" solution (Sun, IBM, or "blessed" by Gartner), then it's not something to be taken seriously.

No, it will be taken and weighed against the vendors. How one presents an idea to management will likely be what is not taken seriously.

Sun, IBM, etc all have solutions and they work. They are packaged, supported, planned, installed, warranted, and documented. How do you present your stellar ideas to management? In a dusty old computer that reeks of "homebuilt", a cheesy black and white Powerpoint presentation, no plan for failure, no support structure, no redundancy, no analysis (as in a real B-school style analysis) of cost structure and other lost opportunity to compare your idea to a professional idea?

This is what I see when a brilliant idea comes out of IT. Half baked, kool-aid drinking engineers reapplying another bug ridden Linux tool convinced that their idea is the best simply because they conjured it themselves and on the face it seems cheaper.

Spend a few minutes and package your idea. Bell Labs developed ideas well because they thought them through obsessively and not because they were presented and accepted at the half-baked stage of development.

I'm not saying that half baked ideas are bad. Not at all. It's simply that a half baked idea cannot be evaluated well against a fully supported (vendor) idea. In a fear-driven shareholder environment, a well thought out plan of a good idea trumps a crappy brilliant idea every time.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Bullshit

[SCHecklerX]

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).

Well doh

[Kjella]

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?".

RTFAd?

[roman_mir]

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.)

Re:Shit World 2007

[Jeff DeMaagd]

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.

CEO's Want Something For Nothing

[NeverVotedBush]

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.

Re:Shit World 2007

[epine]

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.

Re:Shit World 2007

[0xdeadbeef]

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.

Blue Sky research is what is most lacking

[Ralph Spoilsport]

It's the kind of research that simply INVENTS new weird shit that is what is so tragically dying in the world of American technology. The Bell Labs of the world are now in the university systems, but they are frequently tied to corporate donors (for better and worse) and are further problematised by society's need to educate people to be something other than simple cogs in the industrial machine - making them well rounded, critically thinking, discerning citizens is also of great importance. As a consequence, the need for innovation in research as downloaded to the level of university destabilises itself over time as time/mind share is increasingly directed to the mercantile demands of the corporate masters.

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