This article from Business Week highlights many of the challenges to rebuilding a business for innovation that we discussed in class. It provides advise to a turnaround CEO… much of the points align with our conclusions from class. Namely:
- Recruit Believers – As with Intuit case, the change required fresh talent with innovative thinking;
- Hire Objective Senior Managers – creating the right metrics and accountability measures is critical (as we saw in Donnelly);
- Fail Forward – encourage risk-taking; and,
- Control the Framing – this is an interesting idea that we did not discuss: “If you control the language, you control the expectations.”
I think these points are warranted, even if unsubstantiated with real-life examples in the article. I liked this perspective, because it is resonates with many of the themes we have discussed in class.
The article ends with some practical advise about immovable innovation obstacles — quit! What do you think about the idea of quitting when the going gets tough in innovation?