Almost everyone knows that innovation is one of the keys to our future and it was great to come across an excellent article published recently in a main stream media blog. The article on Innovation by Kristen Le Mesurier in the Sydney Morning Herald Website is well worth reading as is one in the New Yorker: “Hanging Tough” that Kristen refers to.
Some companies have jumped in far too quickly and started laying people off too soon before they had really analysed the full costs of doing that. Usually, companies factor the cost of an employee as several times that persons salary package. So losing just one good person is expensive, but actually laying lots of people off that you may later need is extremely expensive! It can be fatal to long term success whilst providing a short term solution only.
On one hand if companies lay people off too soon they are hampering the chance for the business to grow again when the times improve and are spending a lot of money in redundancy payouts to boot! But on the other hand if they keep on employing too many staff at a loss for too long then they are putting the whole financial foundations of their business in peril. They are caught between the proverbial “rock and a hard place”.
To my mind though, real Innovation is much harder than the easier approach of cost cutting. Yet innovation can yield fantastic results but takes brave managers with foresight and real determination to drive through. When you have a Company Boardroom breathing down your neck it can be very hard to say. “Hey, I have a great idea, let’s try out a complete new product or service line”. Of course, it is easier to justify to the shareholders that cost cutting is needed, particularly at the moment. The connection between innovation and the bottom line can seem a long way off. Innovation is risky, maybe it will work, maybe it won’t. And usually our senior managers and executives, as good as they are, are not rewarded for their innovation. Hence, the most common approach, however reluctantly, is for businesses to cut costs. If your competitors do it, you feel you should and so on it goes. Like a disease it is catching – like a flu for business, one sneezes and everyone catches it.
But history shows Innovation is key, and many books attest to that.
Books such as:
Those are all fantastic reads that should inspire any company leader to try something different.
I understand the difficulties, but just doing what every other company in the crowd does won’t work in the long term either.
Innovation – Let’s give it a chance!
Here are some videos to sit back and get ideas from.
Watch the short presentation by the legendary Tom Peters.
And two longer presentations from Harvard Business Publishing
 
And if you have time flick through this one entitled the “Myths of Innovations” from “Google Tech Talks”. It covers a wide range of innovations including the original Apollo program to the first PC Mouse – in a wooden box!
I first wrote this in my old blog and updated it slightly for this post.
Until next time
Owen
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