It is our good fortune that the answers to this question are found in several richly documented studies of organizational innovation, including Breakthroughs! by P. Ranganath Nayak and John M. Ketteringham; Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras' Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies; Clayton M. Christensen's The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail; and Paul C. Light's Sustaining Innovation.
From these studies, we learn that innovation grows mostly from rich soil, but also from barren soil, rocky soil or no soil at all. Innovations come from organizations that foster creativity as well as those with poor records of innovation -- from creative teams that are joined by their management, ignored by their management, supported only belatedly by their management, misunderstood by their management, and castigated by their management. Innovations can emerge from no organization at all.
Innovations are not organizational creations, although they may be helped or hindered by organizations. Once an innovation is successful, it is eagerly claimed by the organization and often by management consultants. Innovations are more like works of art than works of commerce. Teams of people who accomplish innovations behave more like disciples emerging from the tutelage of a great visionary than like the graduates of a prestigious management curriculum.
Some innovations are direct responses to obvious needs. But just as many innovations are ideas for which there is as yet no obvious need. It turns out that the garbage-can theory is right. In the decision soup churning about in the garbage can, there will be problems looking for solutions and solutions looking for problems, questions looking for answers and answers looking for questions. Creativity and innovation are not linear, they are circular.
Happier workers are more generally productive, but a happy and productive environment does not necessarily nurture latent creativity. The idea that organizational culture can be managed or created so as to either support or stifle creativity or the innovative spirit has no evidence to support it. The astute Lawrence Lynn once wrote that the manager who claims to be creating a culture of creativity will almost certainly be regarded as a pompous ass by those in the organization who are genuinely creative.
But, we know there are innovative and creative organizations. What do such organizations have in common? Charismatic and visionary leadership? Carefully crafted strategic planning processes? Elegant mission statements? Great metrics? An overriding commitment to goal achievement?
None of the above.
These studies identify one common feature of truly innovative organizations -- core values and a powerful collective sense of purpose. Such core values are not the same from organization to organization, nor are they necessarily those that we would regard as enlightened or humanistic -- although sometimes they are. Nevertheless, innovative institutions are organized around a "cult-like" devotion to a set of values that give organizations their reason for being and command the dedication of their employees. Adherence to core values does not mean that innovative organizations resist change or are strategically conservative. Indeed, such organizations use what Collins and Porras call "big hairy audacious goals" to stay energized and challenged.
The best moves in advancing those goals do not necessarily follow from systematic planning. Visionary organizations accommodate lots of inefficiency in the pursuit of excellence. They encourage experimentation; they seize opportunities even when they don't fit into the strategic plan and take advantage of the accidental. What, in retrospect, looks like the result of prescient planning is sometimes the happy outcome of a policy of, as the authors put it, "Let's just try a lot of stuff and keep what works."
There are barriers to innovation. When risk-taking and failure are punished, creativity is less likely. Discouraging experimentation probably discourages innovation. Initial statements of creative ideas are seldom fully formed and well defended. Managers who wish to look smart will attack such ideas as unfamiliar, unproven and risky. Every organization has people who know all the reasons new things cannot be done.
Organizations need to be led by courageous people who know when to say yes, even at the risk of failure. It helps the creative process to put managers, researchers and others in the upper levels of the hierarchy with clients, customers and citizens and to then try to get the managers and researchers to shut up and listen. Innovations often come from individuals and groups with a track record of innovation. Finally, it is helpful to keep the process of innovation and creativity at arms length from the legal staff, lest they imagine some law or regulation against it!
Organizational originality is nonlinear, unpredictable, untidy, lumpy, and it tends to resist being managed. This information should be disappointing to management consultants selling prescriptions for organizational innovation and managers looking for easy innovation because such prescriptions mostly run counter to what we know about real organizational innovation.
