Maxwell
Wessel makes some very interesting conclusions in his article Why Big
Companies Can’t Innovate. The
general theme of the report is that big companies can’t innovate because they
are not designed to innovate. Unlike
start-ups which are designed to solve customer problems through innovations,
big companies have already solved customer problems. Their challenge now that they have
accomplished that is to solve their customers’ problems more efficiently, so
they can generate a larger profit.
Wessel
goes on to make the argument that there is nothing wrong with leveraging underutilized
assets in order to be more efficient and deliver higher profits. While I agree that there is nothing wrong
with this, I don’t agree that this is a good excuse for big companies to stop
innovating all together. I think that
every company should have the goal of continuing to delight customers through
continuous improvement and a better value proposition. The only way to do this is through continuous
innovation.
The
problem with focusing solely on process efficiency and not increasing customer
value is that eventually somebody is going to come along with something better
than what you have to offer. If you are
standing still, then eventually somebody is going to catch and pass you. The company I work for now offers a financial
bonus to any employee who submits an idea that the company lawyers determine is
a good enough idea to file for patent. If
the application is accepted, there is an additional bonus. The problem with this method is that there
are many jobs where there are little to no opportunities to develop a
patentable idea, so only a portion of the employees are motivated by this
incentive.
