Busting Innovation Myths – Part 2
We hope you enjoyed our first instalment of innovation myths last week.
Now that we have busted some common misconceptions around leadership support for innovation, we thought we’d blow your minds, and take it one step further by looking at three more myths around organizational design for innovation.
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Innovation Is Sexy
Actually, innovation is brutally hard work that often leads to failure. In fact, in most corporations, innovation is not sexy at all: it is often career suicide… Innovation is a great career choice at a very limited number of companies — like Amazon, where the CEO has explicitly highlighted that innovation and failure are twins.
Verdict: WRONG! -
Money Doesn’t Drive Innovators
Just giving them a cool place to work and an amazing mission — doesn’t always satisfy an entrepreneur. While a great place to work and an inspiring mission are important, it is also frustrating for innovators that don’t get rewarded for creating new, multi-million dollar growth engines. Because the pay structure in startups is often aligned with the company’s performance, employees are incentivized and aligned with the company.
Verdict: WRONG! -
In today’s environment, startups are actually much better funded than corporate ventures. Venture capital is awash with resources that they invest in startups with a strong growth potential, which in turn gives the startup teams time to search for success. In the startup world, incentives to scale and make quick decisions are also much better aligned with growth. The resources and patience are simply not always available in in large companies, since they are often focused on managing existing business models.
As we can see from this chart, Corporate Venture Capital is a growing but still relatively small portion of the investment in external startups. CVCs are putting money to work externally, but how much are they actually funding internal innovation?
Verdict: WRONG!
Don’t forget, that you can avoid the common mistakes caused by these myths, and prepare your organization using our new innovation readiness assessment tool. We still have some more myths up our sleeve, and remember “failure is always an option.”
Have we inspired you to bust some myths or practices of your own? Let us know.