Creating Conditions for Innovation

The editorial team at the Corporate Learning Network has published two posts that consider the consider the challenge of innovating within established organizations. In Part 1 – Understanding Why Innovation is So Difficult they highlight how attention to daily tasks of current operations takes the attention away from investments of time and energy in innovations. Because new things disrupt current activities, forces are mounted to purge the innovators and their innovations to protect the current business. This leaves organizations with a dilemma because innovations are necessary for the future health of the enterprise.

In Part II – Structuring for Innovation the authors present the argument that innovative activities must be organized separately from ongoing business. They present examples illustrating how creating separate organizational units is essential to the success of genuinely innovative efforts. These examples include universities that organized distance learning efforts in separate units, and RCA which created a separate organization to launch television so that it would not be destroyed by managers of the established radio business.

An interesting question for those of us focused on learning is how locating innovation efforts within existing units or creating separate units might impact opportunities for learning. Assuming that learning is essential to any innovation initiative, we can ask how the location of such an initiative might impact opportunities to learn. Although creating separate units for innovation efforts would seem to provide the distance to buffer new activities from established ones and allow for a focus on the innovation, such distance might also reduce opportunities to access the knowledge of those operating the existing business units. Over the longer term, separating innovations might also make it more difficult for existing units to access the learning of those managing the innovation effort.

The lesson seems to be that when innovation is located in a separate unit, steps might be taken to promote the flow information between regular operating units and the innovation unit. This could be done through the selection and assignment of staff, through hierarchical reporting and sharing of information or even through peer-to-peer communications, taking care in the latter case to maintain the buffer between the daily demands of current operations and the needs of the innovation initiative.