Arnold Beekes

It is very attractive to let always the same people be involved on your innovation projects. These are the people who are experienced in the innovation tasks and you know what you get. This leads to two potential hick ups. The innovation people can become complacent themselves, as the innovation activities become routine itself. Continuously following the same steps and processes to do these projects might make you blind for newness itself. The people who are not involved in innovation are more and more settled into their comfort zone. This it becomes harder and harder to get them out of that zone. The longer you do something, the stronger the attachment! As this situation continues (as in most companies) the gap between the innovators and the 'BAU-people (business as usual) becomes larger and larger. And the implementation of innovation becomes more difficult and consumes much more time. Obviously this isn't what you want. You are looking for ...

In medium to large organizations there is a need to standardize procedures and to have habits. Here are some examples of habits: every monday morning there is a team meeting; R&D is done in-house; managers are senior men; we focus on addressing faults, mistakes and individual weaknesses. Most leaders are not even consciously aware of these practices. They are so ingrained in the the 'way things get done here' (the 'culture'), that they are neither questioned nor improved. While some of these habits are quite beneficial, like having regular team meetings, others do often block innovation. Let's have a look at R&D which is done only internally. This certainly will create a kind of arrogance, 'we know it better'. And also the focus is entirely on satisfying the internal customers, rather than the external stakeholders. Also it is impossible to keep up to date on all new developments in the market and therefor there is a huge risk of missing ...

Yesterday I had to accompany my mother to the doctor. The roles reverse, as she did go with me while I was young and now it is the other way around. She had to perform a lung test. The outcome was that she has to use a certain medicine for six weeks. Why is this relevant in the context of innovation? Well, the medicine has to be inhaled via a complicated tool. So, we went to the pharmacist and ordered the product. Then he set up a meeting in a separate room with us to 'demonstrate' the product. In other words, how to use it. This is all very good, but........ he had problems showing it correctly. As a matter of fact he made some mistakes, as I did find out reading the manual. The product is not easy to use and because of that it will not be used properly. While the medicine and the tool might be very advanced, the results still depends on whether your customer CAN use it. The product was clearly not designed in a user-centric way. It still was designed form a pro...

It is very hard to distinguish your products and services, if you only focus on the features and/or the price. Even if you have a differentiator it will not last very long, as your competitors will catch up very soon. One way to differentiate yourself in a sustainable way is to have a compelling story about your company, your self and your product/service. Here is an example from TOMS' Blake Mycoskie: “ We make great shoes and give away a pair to a child in need for every pair we sell.” Recently I also did hear the story from method by Adam Lowry. He mentioned that while cleaning his apartment he started reading the label of the cleaning product and did find out that many ingredients were toxic. Toxic for his own health as well as for the environment. So he started method: environmental friendly cleaning products. Both stories give a personal touch and makes them easy to remember and to share with others. The story has to be personal, either a personal e...

In my last post I did mention the need to (regularly) look outside of the walls of your organization. In addition to that , there is another very obvious area which is very often neglected, YOUR PEOPLE! In these challenging times the focus is on survival and mostly on cutting costs. This means that people are laid off, trainings are skipped and hours worked are increasing towards a very unhealthy level. Recently I have coached some very senior managers who are on the verge of a burn-out. They just work too many hours, which has a negative impact on their effectivity, their health and their families. However, if you want to survive and grow, the only way to do that is to make better use of your people. They are there, but their talents and qualities are not being used. They are not engaged ( 2011 Towers Perrin) and not happy (Conference Board 2010: only 45% of workers are happy). And both employee engagement and happiness makes us more motivated, resilient, creative...

Recently I have visited a couple of large, traditional Corporations. This means that they are used to doing business in a certain way and that it is very difficult to have them change that way. Change for change sake is of course not good.   Globalization and the Internet Business demand that you are on top of your game, rather than a laggard.   But these big companies are not used to looking structurally and regularly over the big wall, which they have put around their organization. This means that they have a low level of market savviness. E.g. nobody has heard about Zappos, the power of customer service or the fact that young people want to use their own tools. They see social media as a threat. The only thing what they are doing is to prepare how to react to some negative messages. This is what they are good at, damage control. They have never thought about the use of social media for learning. Learning what is going on in their market (e.g. consumer...

This week I have read two excellent articles about obstacles for change ( http://huff.to/w1QHev ) and obstacles for innovation ( http://bit.ly/uU3OvQ ). They clearly indicate that - as an innovator- you also have to be creative how to deal with the status quo. You can’t just give all your time and energy to the new idea; you also have to design a strategy to address the status quo. And the longer this status quo exists, the more powerful it is and the more resistant to change it will be. Innovators see immediately the benefits of new products/services/business models etc. But most other people have a different perspective. So, we need to help them to see the world as we see it. Therefore you have to put in a lot of effort to describe the changed market conditions. And why they will impact the business very soon. And why the existing portfolio is not suitable to address these new challenges. Then they can start to see the new world (outside of the Corporate gates)...