Beyond the idea - Book Summary

Beyond the IdeaVijay Govindarajan & Chris Trimble

Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble are professors at the Tuck School at Dartmouth’s center for Global Leadership. Indra Nooyi wrote the foreword for their last book on Reverse Innovation.

Thomas Edison said : Genius is 1 per cent inspiration and 99 per cent perspiration. No one listened. Companies allot a lot of time to the 1 %, i.e. ideas and struggle to execute innovations.

Innovation is a two part challenge – part one is ideas and part two is execution

Innovation execution requires time, energy and distinct thinking

Most companies are built to be performance engines, a performance engine demands efficiency, innovation demands something else.

Repeatability and predictability are foundations of the performance engine, they are also the antithesis of innovation.

Innovation : Any project that is new to your organization and has an uncertain outcome.

There are three models of innovation :S: SmallR: RepeatableC: Custom

Model S works on individual pride and effort , since it uses up any slack time that an employee has.

Motivation drives model small, but process is the key to model R – repeatable.

The more efficient a Model R – repeatable becomes, the less flexible it becomes.Model R – repeatable can only deliver this years version of last years product.

With Model c – custom, we must think of one initiative at a time. Each is a custom effect and requires its own special team and special plan.

You simply don’t get breakthrough innovation without breakthrough organizational design.

The Innovation leader is someone who will partner with the performance engine and not fight it.

Companies tend to ask too much of shared central staff because they are usually talented and a company feels they can do anything.

‘If you want to change the culture, change the people’

Senior executives tend to treat the problem of peer trouble below them as ‘ they will sort it out, they are adults’. That’s not true. A performance engine always smashes the innovation engine.

In the context of innovation, learning is valuable and should be prioritized over results.

We define learning as improvement in the accuracy of predictions.

Learning should take priority over results because faster learning leads to better results.

All Innovation leaders have to spend a little, learn a lot.

The planning process of a performance engine is not right for an innovation engine

One must balance the consequences with certainty of each plan. Consequences are being a little wrong to badly wrong, certainty is definite to uncertain.

No performance engine lasts forever, that’s why we need innovation. Over the long run strategy and innovation are tightly coupled.

At the core is a three box process :1. Manage the present2.Selectively forget the past3. Create the future.

Innovation and change are similar challenges. They both involve encouraging employees to move in new directions.

Innovation is about experimentation. Innovation initiatives are launched with a full understanding that the outcome is uncertain. Failure is an option.