Innovation Spectrum: The Trouble with Tribbles

If you remember this Star Trek episode, you’ll recall those cute, little furry creatures that everyone loved ... at least until fur- balls began spilling out of every nook and cranny, threatening the survival of the Enterprise. (It turns out that tribbles are born pregnant and hungry. The more they eat the more tribbles there are to have little tribbles who love to eat and have more little tribbles, who ... you get the picture).

The words we use are somewhat like tribbles ... they might seem bright-eyed and innocent on the surface, but they can often start multiplying and nibbling away at our understanding, creating misunderstanding and chaos before we recognize what’s gone wrong.

Clayton Christensen’s ground-breaking and award-winning series ("The Innovator's Dilemma" and "The Innovator's Solution") is a powerful guide to innovation; however, the basic terminology is somewhat like tribbles ... it’s a little fuzzy and can be distracting. However, we *highly* recommend both books.

Christensen divides innovation into two categories: disruptive and sustaining. The focus is on the critically important nature of disruptive innovation, rightfully maintaining that the very future of your organization depends on its ability to do disruptive innovation. Yet, the very term "disruptive" is a negative. What right-minded organization wants to deliberately disrupt the systems it has spent years creating, especially if those systems are working and producing sales and profit growth? Disruption implies chaos, a state few control-minded managers are willing to embrace.

On the other hand, disruptive innovation sounds sexy. When people start thinking and talking about innovation, they want to think BIG.

Why go after small changes when we can shoot for the stars, break out of the box, hit a home run, or land the big one? So, with one word, we’ve created a psychological state that attracts and repulses at the same time. The tension created between the two poles of attraction can hold us suspended in a state of inaction.

There are similar problems with the word "sustaining." Sustaining is a synonym for maintaining which sounds dangerously close to status quo. The word itself repels us. Managers are hyped to want real, macho innovation: something new and exciting, the next big thing, not just the same old thing, and definitely not the weak-tea substitute: sustaining innovation.

The word tribbles have us in a quagmire: we understand the need for disruptive innovation but want it to somehow happen without changing our systems ... and we think anything less than disruptive innovation is settling for a puny second best. This could easily be a prescription for cognitive overload resulting in an intense focus on fixing accounts payable.

The Innovation Spectrum

One of the most important steps on the innovation journey is finding a common definition of innovation. The actual definition is not as important as the common understanding of what you’re talking about when you say innovation. The definition used by the InnovationNetwork is: *PEOPLE creating value through the implementation of new ideas.* We like this definition because it focuses on the source of innovation, people, and it is broad enough to encompass new products, services, processes, business models, and strategies.

As a way around the terminology bog, we suggest the following terms and definition for the spectrum of innovation:

** Improving -- these projects are designed to cut costs, improve what already exists or extend current product or service lines.
Product example: customizable covers for cell phones. Process
example: an automated, email reminder system that prompts a significant reduction in accounts receivable.

** Evolving -- these possibilities can lead to distinctly new and better products, services, or processes and should create new value for customers and/or the organization. Product example: Wireless internet access for cell phones. Process example: online invoicing and bill payment.

** Game changing -- these new products or processes dramatically change everything including the target market and value proposition.
Product example: cell phones. Process example: eBay, ATMs, Dell direct to customer sales process.

Spectrum not Boxes

These categories do not have hard walls between them and a lot of unproductive time can be spent arguing about where a new idea belongs. There are an infinite variety of points along the innovation spectrum, which makes it difficult to precisely distinguish between a game changing innovation and one that significantly advances current products or services, an "evolving"
innovation. For example, Febreze could be viewed as an improvement in the line of odor control products. However, because it actually eliminates odors rather than masking them, it has attracted previous non-users such as hotels, which find it a cheaper means of maintaining quality room standards. Thus, it could be considered a game changer although it does not fit other qualities normally associated with that end of the innovation spectrum. Plus, as Christensen says, "An idea that is disruptive to one business may be sustaining to another."

There are some very unique qualities to most game changing innovations ... qualities that make them somewhat like living with a gorilla. If a new concept fits fairly neatly into the current marketing, production and delivery processes, chances are it’s not a gorilla and you can handle it within the normal processes of your organization. If it doesn’t fit and it’s already raising hackles around the organization, you may need to create a special habitat for your gorilla.

Whether you call it disruptive or game changing, it’s only a matter of time until your market or industry experiences a Teutonic (or more appropriately as Doug says ... Tectonic) shift with the power to topple most of the current players. The overwhelming probability, based on historical studies, is that it will happen because a newcomer to the industry recognizes an un- served or underserved segment of customers and has a cost-structure that allows it to offer a new product or service that dramatically reduces cost or offers greater convenience.

Because we think Christensen's series is so important, we have created a Working Guide to Gorilla Innovation based on these books. This working guide is designed to help you understand and use this series to make your innovation efforts more effective.

This guide is FREE to InnovationNetwork members. For more information about how to join, click here.

Comments

[Ken Chomic]

I believe the definition of innovation should contain the necessary information collection: "PEOPLE collecting information and generating new knowledge and understanding to experiment with new possibilities in order to implement new concepts that create new value." You have to know where you are and what you have to work with before you can innovate.
I find that brainstorming is much enhanced when information is graphically displayed, a la MindManager, as part of the process.

[Douglas Coler]

"...until your market or industry experiences a Teutonic shift with the power to topple most of the current players."

I belive the phrase wanted here is Tectonic Shift, that is, an earthquake. A Teutonic shift, on the other hand, is not unlike what happened in Germany after the wall came down....