Why Most Organizations Kill Innovation Before It Starts - And What to Do Instead

By Gayatri Kale, DBA

Candidate in Organizational Behavior, National Louis University

While most organizations proclaim their desire for innovation, very few have structures capable of delivering on this desire. Innovation often fails not because of a lack of innovative ideas but because the systems and cultures within the organization actively inhibit the realization of innovation.

My area of specialization is organizational behavior. In particular, my interests lie in how leadership communication and organizational culture influence employee reactions to change and innovations. I have found that there are clear patterns in the failure of organizations to manage change and innovation effectively. Below is what the literature says about the key ingredients of success.

Create Systems Where Innovation Is Part of the Process, Not the Event

Innovative organizations do not depend on periodic brainstorms or innovation contests. Instead, they create systems that incorporate experimentation into their work processes on a daily basis.

One of the best systems I have found in my research is what researchers refer to as "structured experimentation." This involves developing a systematic approach where employees at any level can generate an idea, experiment with it on a pilot basis, collect data from the experiment, and decide whether to scale up or scrap the idea without repercussions. The important aspect here is the word systematic. Innovation should not be considered an event but rather a process.

This need not involve a huge expense. It needs only three things: a straightforward process for submitting suggestions; some time and very little resource spent on testing them; and a feedback mechanism that communicates what became of their idea to the contributors. 

If the employees are not provided with any response to their suggestions, the process is doomed to failure, not because the employees have exhausted their ideas, but because the organization did not complete the loop.

Validate Your Ideas by Testing Them on a Small Scale and Listening

Where organizations often go wrong when innovating is that they try to validate their ideas by planning them into the ground. The result of doing so is that a 50-page business case does not show whether your idea is going to succeed. An efficient experiment does.

Ideas can be validated efficiently through a test of the idea’s main assumption. This should be done rapidly with as little effort as necessary. For example, if the idea is for a new service process, run the idea with one team over the course of two weeks.

The thing that really counts in the testing process isn't the data but the willingness of the leadership to accept whatever it has to say, even if it goes against the assumptions the leaders hold. From my experience in studying change processes within organizations, I know that the decisions employees resist most aren't the hard ones. The decisions employees resist most are those that seem to deny reality. The case is similar to innovation. If leaders refuse to accept the lessons from their experiments because the data is inconvenient, experimentation becomes just for show.

Leadership Creates the Culture for Innovation, Whether They Know It or Not

It is impossible for any innovation process to work if the culture itself doesn’t embrace it. And in real life, cultures are defined by how leaders behave rather than by their words.

A leader who emphasizes the importance of innovation and then punishes his team for failing in their experiment sends a very strong message that he or she should not take risks. Similarly, a leader who supports innovation but fails to provide time and money for experimenting also sends out a clear message.

Organizational culture studies have shown that it is always the difference between what is espoused and what is rewarded that results in trust erosion. High-trust cultures allow people to feel comfortable with experimenting, failing, and starting anew. Low-trust cultures allow individuals to insulate themselves from risk by doing only what is tried and true.

Leadership does not create innovative ideas. Leadership creates the environment in which innovative ideas can come about, be tested, and if successful, implemented.

Connect With Gayatri

www.linkedin.com/in/gayatrikale