1. Delivery slows down. When innovating, it’s easy to fall into the trap of trying to make something perfect, over-engineering the solution and constantly adding new features. I often see this with IT technical teams who love to tweak and refine the application. Timebox the work, get it done and get it in front of customers. Innovation is only good if it’s delivered.
2. Lose touch with customer.
I’ve seen departments spend too long on ideation or refining a process based on opinion on technical experts.
This is why I use #agile with my clients because it drives delivery based on outcomes that your customers will value.
3. Idea overload. When you come up with new ideas every week or month, you create confusion for you staff and it becomes difficult to know which ideas will go forward. The continual introduction of new ideas can leave staff struggling to make sense of where to focus which undermines productivity. Get visibility of all your new initiatives and use a disciplined process to scrutinize why you’re doing it. Be ruthless. If it doesn’t add value, save cost and deliver strategic goals, defer it.
4. It creates a management nightmare. With lots of innovation on the go, it becomes more difficult to track all the new projects and before you know it, you spending more time managing than innovating. According to Bain research, 70% of global executives see excessive innovation raising their costs and hindering their profit growth. Have a lean, time-boxed process with checkpoints for validating new ideas (see below) and provide clear direction outcomes needed to grow the company.
5. Your business will suffer. If you always focus on the next big wow solution, you’ll miss making smaller improvements to what your existing operations and processes. Fixing a broken process in operations isn’t exciting but the payback will be high.
Innovation is important but having a solid products and services is also important. You need to do both and I recommend a ratio of 80% of budget on enhancing existing capabilities and improving efficiency to make sure your business is running well and 20% on innovation for new products and services.
According to Bain research, when you find the right balance between innovation and sustainment and companies will reduce costs by as much as 35% and grow revenues up to 40%.
Listen to all ideas, but validate each one using your product marketing group or other customer-facing leaders. Select ideas that capitalize on your core competencies and markedly move the needle. Then build a case for why the idea should be pursued. Don’t innovate for the sake of innovation. Focus on delivering great service and products for your customers.