I've had too many conversations lately with friends who struggle with the future of their organizations. It often boils down to:
"I get that we need to focus on the core business right now.
But shouldn't we at least invest some effort in the future?
We must still innovate some!
If not, we'll be left in the dust once the economy turns around
and others already have their future business in place."
The answer is "yes of course we still must innovate." It just has to take a new form.
We must put that innovation work in the service of very immediate objectives, so innovators add value to the core right now, long before some transformation can take hold.
Leaders can set their teams on a more solid path with two (fairly) simple shifts:
- From diversity across topics to diversity within a topic
- Go from single-shot transformation to incrementality
And this may even benefit innovation, as much as we might bemoan it right now.
