In this week’s thought leadership roundup, we take a look at the innovation returns trap, how to use the right leaders to build an innovation culture, and how to avoid wasting time and money on thought leadership initiatives.
The Innovation ROI Trap
From the Matt Chapman Blog:
“Unless a team is a self-contained entity (from inception to market release) or aligned as part of an established innovation function (e.g. NPD) then at some point there is a handover to another part of the organisation who will potentially realise the innovation itself. They will in turn account for the innovation output in their estimates for revenue generation or cost-savings. This leads to such innovation service teams re-positioning their ROIs as something they influenced within the business versus directly attributed too. That can be fine to a point but here lies the Innovation ROI Trap, as this ROI isn’t a direct measurement attributable to the innovation team but one that benefits others. This can in turn eventually lead to someone at some point in time questioning their continued funding as they are seen as a cost with no visible return. This is where the Innovation ROI Trap closes and usually rears its ugly head when an organisation needs to reduce its funding of non-core activities, which innovation business service teams are typically seen in there fledgling years.”
Why Read It: It’s difficult for most businesses to place value on anything if it’s not directly related to returns. Understandable, sure, but also limiting. It can cause suggestions that are potentially very fruitful to be disregarded if they don’t appear profitable in the immediate future, and it can keep established companies from readjusting spend and resources in line with market changes, for fear that short-term disruptions will outweigh future benefits. This article dives into the dangers of this kind of thinking and how to avoid it.
Build an Innovation Culture – With the Right Leaders
From Innovation Excellence:
“For a leader to change the way an organization approaches innovation, they must have the right mentality. Traditional [leadership] involves selling a future state of the company to their employees, but that approach does not work when you are trying to create a culture of innovation. Instead of pitching a vision for the future, leaders that inspire change must ask “How can I create an environment for innovation to occur.” These leaders must be able to tap into the collective wisdom of every employee in the organization and be able to generate new growth from these slivers of wisdom.
Leaders that drive change can inspire a willingness to innovate within the community by building the right rules of engagement. We share here and here about the relationship between engagement and innovation. Setting the rules of engagement ensures that everyone agrees on the purpose of innovation, while at the same time, keeping everyone focused on activities that foster innovation.
In a mismanaged community, the pursuit of innovation can actually create more silos and conflict. The rules of engagement help to relieve those tensions and allow employees to trust each other while empowering them to think with data and the bigger picture in mind.
Why Read It: These days, there are few things more important to staying competitive than innovation and engagement. This piece explains the crucial role that leaders play in instigating the right mentality to turn both of those elements from mere buzzword or goal into executable initiative and cultural cornerstone.
How Accounting Firms Waste Time And Money On Thought Leadership
From Forbes:
“The complication with thought leadership initiatives is that they are increasingly becoming undifferentiated commodities. This is a function of poor conceptualization and poor implementation. For example, many accounting firms are producing multitudes of reports. The problem is that most of these are unimaginative rehashes and “me-too” documents. According to Bruce Rogers, Chief Insight Officer at Forbes and one of the world’s foremost authorities on thought leadership, “In constructing thought leadership campaigns, accounting firms or any professional services firms must approach the matter strategically. This includes an in depth understanding of what really matters to the intended audiences, how the content will profoundly bolster the firm’s position as an expert, and how all parties will dramatically benefit.”
Not only must the content be valuable, but also it has to be communicated. Effective distribution is critical and is a more glaring problem for many accounting firms than producing worthwhile content. It is all too common for the accounting firms that produced these thought leadership reports to fail to develop and execute a viable dissemination strategy. Hence, no one that can provide them new business even sees the material.”
Why Read It: To be fair, TL done wrong is a detriment to any company, no matter the industry. In this pieces from Forbes, you’ll see how “worst practices” from the accounting field do more harm than good, and be able to translate what was learned from these mistakes into best practices for your own company.
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