Different paths to innovation

Make no mistake about it, if a company is going to succeed today and grow in the future it has to innovate.
If you ask Jan Baan what it takes to innovate, it is simple, it is within his DNA.
If you ask Peter Skarzynski, what it takes, it takes a plan and a change in mindset for a company to allow innovation.
Either way, it has to happen. That what this morning’s keynoters said during MESA’s 2008 plant-to-plant enterprise conference in Orlando, Fla.
“I have found the maximum innovation time for a company is 20 years,” said Baan, the executive chairman and chief executive of Cordys and founder of The Baan Co., the maker of Baan ERP software. “After that, innovation is called M&A, mergers and acquisition.”
“At Baan, we moved from product driven to customer driven,” Baan said. “Then we made the biggest mistake when we went with an IPO – then we became shareholder driven.”
It won’t be too long, Baan said, before BPM (business process management) will replace or supplant ERP software.
ERP is database driven, but BPM encompasses other aspects of the business, like the human element, Baan said. “We want to bring the human element into the flow.”
To change into a BPM mindset, it will take quite a bit of change. However, the technology is there, it is just a matter of finding some agents of change to push and then everyone will start to fall in line, Baan said.
“Information is power,” Baan said. “The industrial age was all about mass production. The customer age is about mass customization.”
That type of change is hard to envision, but you have to have leaders that foster innovation.
“How do you innovate when past performance does not guarantee future success?” asked Skarzynski, managing director at industry consultant Strategos.
“Innovation is a term that is thrown about and used very casually,” he said. “Maybe it is overhyped. But the future doesn’t just happen, it is created.”
He added there is a 96% failure rate on innovated products, but that does not mean a company should give up.
“It is hard. It is difficult. In many organizations innovation is often suppressed,” he said. “Dare to be radical. Does(innovation)have the power to change customer expectations? Radical does not have to risky,” Skarzynski said.
He listed seven areas needed to innovate:
1) Listen to those closest to the problem
2) Encourage, teach and support new perspectives
3) Challenge industry orthodoxies, the rules governing the marketplace
4) Harness emerging trends; make the entrepreneurial spirit part of your company’s DNA
5) Address the unarticulated needs
6) Look up and down the value chain
7) Leverage know how – yours and others
Creating an innovative environment “is all about the culture of the organization,” Skarzynski said. “To create innovation you have to find the impediments and find the enablers.”