Earlier today, Sig Rinde and I had a long discussion about how extreme business modeling challenges the status quo and in which businesses this is likely to work best. A significant amount of the discussion centred on how you might do things in an innovative manner. Sig’s thinking starts and ends with the customer, what they really want from you, how that gets communicated and finally how business is done. So far so good.
Sig’s thesis is that innovation makes a quantum difference to an existing business and gives a massive advantage to a start up (all other hurdles for startups being equal.) This is fundamentally different to automation, where all you’re really doing is bringing order to existing problems and maybe speeding things up. Then reality kicks in as I look across the business landscape. It rarely happens. So I turned to Geoffrey Moore, one of the most interesting business thinkers of the 20-21 century. Geoffrey questions the reality of business innovation, arguing among other things:
My recent research leads me to believe that innovation, as a topic, leads the business writing industry in twaddle per page.
Nothing new there. If anything, I’d say the rise of this medium has made the business of sifting sense from senseless more difficult. He then takes a pop at Tom Feremski on the basis that:
Tom’s key point is that innovation needs to be tightly tied to disruption, and that therefore the other forms of innovation I cite should be considered as categorically different, not really belonging to the set labeled innovation.
I don’t read that in Tom’s argument. Instead, Tom refers to the ‘quality’ of disruption within the context of innovation. This is not a trivial point but it has to be considered in the context of change. I don’t see how you can have one without another. Which brings me to a fundamental crunch issue. Ask any management consultant the biggest challenge in systems change and you’ll hear the same refrain: “Change management among people.” Whether any of us like it or not, resistance to change stops even the most simple planned process improvement, let alone proposed disruption to business models.
It’s why I resigned from practice in 1993 and why I get dismayed when I hear: “Nice idea, not around here.” And it’s why, in my opinion, professionals will need to carefully rethink what they’re doing in so many departments. Especially if they really want to make a difference to the quality of work they do, the money they make and the long term viability of their businesses. But then if you’ve got current double digit growth and you’re comfortable, then why bother? (Not my question I hasten to add.) And the larger the practice, the more difficult it gets.
To round this off I considered whether Sig’s ideas, and more important the product he’s building, have a disruptive place in the world. Ric can’t wait to get his hands on it. And Hamish – who’s a SAP guy, sees potential. Me? Thingamy renders obsolete the concept of a set of accounts. I like that.
Technorati Tags: innovation, startups
