Dear Senior Minister Iswaran: Innovation is not a “Strategic Thrust”

This morning while reading the morning paper, I came across a press coverage of a tourism conference  held recently in Singapore. In the article, Senior Minister of State for Trade and Industry S Iswaran was quoted saying,

“the tourism industry should move away from quantity to quality if it was to overcome the long-term challenges posed by regional competition as well as land and labour constraints. In other words, emphasis on yield, on the value for the customer and what kind of value-add we can generate rather than sheer number increase”

Following his statement, he suggested three strategic thrusts – Innovation (of ideas), Integration (in industry approach) and (greater) Productivity, that the tourism industry could position itself for growth.

However, I couldn’t help but think that his “recipe for competitiveness” was flawed – mainly because innovation was listed in a linear fashion as the other two “strategic thrusts”, creating the impression that the innovation was a “strategic thrust” on its own.

And because of the recipe flaw, the end result may fall below expectations. Allow me to clarify:

To me, innovation is about creating fundamentally different ways of doing things better. It should not be an objective or a “strategic thrust” but the driving power behind “strategic goals” – whether it is in the area of productivity improvements or integration of industry-wide approaches.

In other words, innovation is not a strategic goal to set (“We want to be innovative”) and then set out to be “innovative”. There should be an end goal that innovation can be used to drive the changes necessary to meet the goal. That way, it would be about building a capability to be innovative.

After all, innovative approaches to productivity and integration will more likely generate results that leapfrog the industry ahead of its competition – and perhaps even change the game altogether and take everyone by surprise. Without innovation powering the “strategic thrusts”, the Singapore tourism industry can only contend with incremental improvements.

But I’m sure they already knew that.

What Senior Minister Iswaran should have said was:

“The tourism industry is encouraged to be innovative in developing ground-breaking ideas to power the “strategic thrusts” of Productivity and Integration – and thereby increase the industry’s competitiveness.”

Now this amended recipe, the next stage is to have the right environment and culture to cultivate the “innovative” mindset, and perhaps to build a strong stomach for “creative uncertainty”. And this, is the crux of the matter that faces “linear thinking” Singapore Inc.

Perhaps in future, the Singapore government should hire me to “right” all strategy and innovation-related speeches.

Can an Organisation’s Agenda Co-Exist with its Executives’ Personal One?

I was talking to a former Oil & Gas industry veteran when he regaled a story that reflected the often conflicting agendas in an organisation.

As the head of manufacturing computing, he and his department ran the entire plant computing automation – from building and supporting all systems, applications and hardware, to optimisation of plant processes.

Whilst the department was responsible for building and supporting all manufacturing processes for the plant, the annual cost of maintaining the department was in the range of $2 million for salaries and another $10 million for systems operations – comparable to the annual budget of a small to medium sized enterprise.

One fine day during a discussion, a “higher up” broached the topic of converting the department from an “overhead” or “expense” into a “cost centre” where every cent used to run the department would be billed to the departments that used the service.

This suggestion did not sit well with my friend on a few levels:-

1. Proprietary technology. The organisation’s manufacturing operations was proprietary to the organisation. Therefore, his department was mission critical to the manufacturing operations. Furthermore, his department’s service was specific to manufacturing operations and could not be re-used for other divisions, say, Marketing, Purchasing or Logistics.
2. Perspective of Profit/Loss versus Expense. It was also his view that at the end of the day, any profit generated from services rendered to other departments would still contribute to the organisation’s overall financial performance. Currently, apart from the indirect costs (salaries) involved in maintaining the department, all other direct operating costs (third party services and hardware costs) were charged back to the “consuming departments”.
3. Looking Good on Paper versus High Productivity. My friend also foresaw the impact of being a cost centre in terms of productivity. With the need to bill for every minute of his team’s time, the productivity of his team would suffer as they would be required to spend a significant amount of time on administrative paperwork, as opposed to focusing on their core responsibilities. In the long run, this would lead to inefficiencies in the department’s operations.

As the “higher up” was only exploring the idea in concept, my friend managed to keep his  department an expense centre, not a cost centre.

Why am I telling this story?

Two reasons.

The on-going battle of “Organisational Good” versus “Executives’ Interests”

Balancing Everyone's Agenda

I saw where both my friend and his “higher up” came from in terms of their view. While I did not speak with the “higher up”, I could imagine that the reason for exploring the option of the department becoming a cost centre was for the purpose of having a clearer “management view” of costs in the organisation. Or that it looks better on the P&L instead of being an expense.

While this was all acceptable from a financial viewpoint, very often an organisation’s management would be overly zealous in its pursuit for a glossier financial performance (even if on paper) at the expense of productivity, or intangibles like staff morale.

Who could blame them? With persistent calls of shareholders to “unlock value” and increase the organisation’s share value, it was inevitable for its managers to think long term when shareholders do not have the patience to stomach relatively poorer financial performance.

The Existence of “Defenders of the Organisation Good”

When my friend said that “at the end of the day, all the department’s ‘profit’ goes back to the organisation”, he didn’t say it with the same resignated breath of an “I-am-just-an-employee”, but carried the introspection of an “invested stakeholder”.

His interest was aligned with his organisation’s.

 

The Chain Effect of a Decision

Instead of looking at the pros and cons specific to his department, he also saw the chain effect of being a cost centre to other departments. In this instance, the cons outweighed the pros of his department becoming a cost centre in the organisation – for both his department, and those of his user groups.

As the head of his department, he considered the impact of the change to his people and their productivity. As a team player in the organisation, he considered the impact of the change to his co-workers and their operational budget.

To his “higher up”, my friend was a mirror of truth, reflecting honesty and forthrightness in his analysis and feedback.

But honestly, his kind is rare and due to their personality traits, often are leaders in specialist arena, not the main arena where organisation culture can be influenced to encourage more wide-spread “invested stakeholder” mentality.

Therefore, to answer the question posed in the title, I will say “No”, but continue to hold out a “Yes” in the hope of encountering more executives of the likes of my friend.

 

Five Keys To Organisational Innovation and Inventiveness

Last year, I attended a networking session hosted by the Singapore Institute of International Affairs where the guest speaker -Fredrik Haren- founder of The Interesting Organization- presented an introduction to his new book on “The Developing World“. Haren said that developed countries needed to be like developing countries where an “explosion” of creativity was driving changes to the world and that “creativity” was about “Copying” ideas and then using those existing ideas to create something new.

Innovation and Inventiveness /Photo Source: renjith krishnan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Today’s post is actually not about “Copying” ideas to make new ones, but about “Expanding” the use of one idea into another one. This post was inspired by a New York Times article I read through Huffington Post called “How the Microplane Grater Escaped the Garage“.

(In the three weeks I spent writing this post, the article has since morphed from “Expanding” ideas to how I think organisations can learn from what is happening today and Be Innovative and Inventive.)

Basically, Microplane is a trademarked series of photo-etched, steel, woodworking tools owned, designed and manufactured by Grace Manufacturing. Used for grating, grinding and sanding wood, it gained popularity amongst home cooks for its grating function, but later became popular with professional chefs and bartenders when it was found that these tools gave their food additional edge. An example as written in the article:

“When you grind a hard cheese, you get little cubes with little surface area. When you use a Microplane and shave a cheese into ribbons, you get five times the surface area.” – Leonard Lee, founder of Lee Valley Tools in Ottawa, Canada

As you can see, it was the consumer that invented a new use for the product, not the manufacturer. To Grace Manufacturing’s credit, they were open-minded about their products’ new market segment and leveraged the opportunity to build sustainable new markets by creating product lines tweaked specifically for culinary, medical and personal grooming purposes.

Based on the article (and a little more), here are my five points on how an organisation can be innovative and inventive:

1. “What are we good at doing?”

What is your organisation's core competence? / Photo Source: zirconicusso / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

If an organisation has a top-selling product, or service, there usually are competencies that drives superior results.

For Grace Manufacturing’s case, it was simply to ask themselves “what am I good at doing?” and then transforming that ability into a viable business. As a result, they evolved their business from printer parts manufacturing, into woodworking tool manufacturing – all based on their competency to “build sharp things”.

Once competencies are determined, build a portfolio of related product or services where this competency is its core. If the product or service veers too far from the core competency, the organisation will suffer higher costs and face higher risk from diversification.

2. “Be Open to Possibilities”

Don't get stuck. Keep an open mind Photo Source: renjith krishnan FreeDigitalPhotos.net

When told by customers that their woodworking tools had found its way into the kitchen, Grace Manufacturing’s second generation of leaders like Maria Grace, could have reacted with the same indignance as her father, Richard Grace, who said that he felt disappointed that the serious woodworking tools he was making was used in the kitchen. Instead, she had a laugh about it and accepted the order. The start of a new market opportunity.

Very often, organisations sold on their product or service’s superiority, or original purpose, often lose their ability to look at opportunities from another perspective. Even when they try, there are so many barriers erected and hardened mindsets that “going back to square one” would be an inevitable ending.

3. “Don’t Stop at Product Innovation”

Product or service innovation alone is not a sustainable strategy for organisations. With fierce disruptions from technology shifts, organisations are facing new competitors in a different competitive landscape, which has broken down many traditional barriers to entry, as well as conventional ways of conducting business.

To have sustainable futures, organisations need to be innovative and inventive in their business – constantly renewing their business model, and reinventing the entire business.

An example of an organisation in constant renewal would be IBM. Having reinvented itself several times throughout its corporate lifetime since the 1890s, IBM is a leading solutions and services company today.

4. “Form-follows-Function.
Function-follows-Needs”

In the article, Maria Grace said that they were a “form-follows-function kid of people” where their start point for all their products stemmed from their ability to engineer sharp tools for efficient work. From there, they would expand the repertoire of products to meet specific grating and shaving needs in the culinary, wood work and medical fields.

Steps to Innovation Success: 1. Needs 2. Function 3. Design / Photo Source: Idea go / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Another company known for its innovative approach and inventiveness is Apple. With its iPhone and iPad devices, Apple disrupted the mobile phone and computing markets by identifying how people wanted to interact with their mobile and computing devices FIRST, BEFORE developing the hardware and a regulated software ecosystem to deliver the experience. Not only did Apple create a good quality product, but defined its product with the experience when using the product – a dimension that no other mobile phone or computing device offered, even till today.

5. “Don’t ‘Think Outside the Box’“

Don't Think Out of the Box./Photo Source: jscreationzs FreeDigitalPhotos.net

In the early years of school, there was once (maybe twice) where I had been too distracting (meaning, talkative) in class and was told to stand outside the classroom as punishment. I remembered that while I was standing outside the room, I would also be looking inside because it was discomforting to be outside the room which I had grown accustomed to sitting inside of.

It’s the same when we are told at work to “Think Outside the Box”. Honestly, it isn’t easy because we’ve learnt to accept what was inside the box, that thinking outside of it would constitute rebellion.

So there we have it! My answer to “Thinking outside the box” is basically “To Rebel”.

Therefore the re-stated name of my third point is “Don’t ‘Think Outside the Box’. Rebel!”

5. “Don’t ‘Think Outside the Box’.
Rebel!“(re-stated title)

"Don't Think Outside the Box! Rebel!" /Photo Source: renjith krishnan /FreeDigitalPhotos.net

In the case of most known rebels, they often questioned “the system” which they saw as “limiting” and fought for a more liberal set of ideas through unconventional way of thought.

Likewise, an organisation needs to learn how to question the relevance of existing products, services, thoughts, strategies and business models in the organisation’s future.

Very often, these questions can stir up uncomfortable issues that key supporters at the management level would turn their heads from and hope that the matter will pass quietly.  For example, “Why are some CEOs still being paid large bonuses when the company barely survived bankruptcy?”; or “Why do large commercial banks not have a thorough and ethical system of balances and checks to ensure that bad banking products are not sold to customers?”

Final Note (and disclaimer) on Being Innovation and Inventiveness:

On a cynical note, consider it fair warning that while “rebelling” serves to create new thoughts leading to innovation and inventions, it also carries a large risk of career martyrdom in the event the road to innovation hits some bumps, and the project gets terminated prematurely.

If you or your organisation face resistance in the form of “it’s always been like that”, or “why are you always rocking the boat”, I have two suggestions:

1. Suck it in and Grit your Teeth – because you will be in for a tough ride where its end may damage you in many ways.
2. Take the hint and Back Off. Your organisation or boss is not ready to take the path of innovation or inventiveness – even if they say they are.

Taking The Road Less Travelled

I’m currently reading a book written by Gary Erickson, the founder and CEO of Clif Bar & Co. Titled “Raising the Bar: Integrity and Passion in Life and Business: The Story of Clif Bar & Co., Gary shares his experience setting up and running his company. What I really liked was how he draws parallels between his passions for the outdoors with his experience running a business.

In Chapter 4 titled “White Road/Red Road (A philosophy for life and business)”, Erickson shared his experience cycling over a thousand miles through major European passes from France to Switzerland and Italy. In that chapter, Gary raised two very important principles that were applicable to innovation and entrepreneurship – both integral in my own life.

1.       The importance of having the right map

2.       The importance of knowing which type of road to travel

In this post, I will summarise the lessons learnt, and how we can learn from its wisdom.

The importance of having the right map

Gary’s story in Chapter 4 came about when he started his trip with a map that covered large areas of Italy, France, Germany and Switzerland, but later realised that most of the roads marked on the map were in red. They soon discovered that these were busy freeways and major roads where bicycles were not allowed on because of the danger and risk. As they travelled, they realised that the map also did not mark the many small roads they either passed or travelled on. When they bought a new and more detailed map, they saw the abundance of route choices available to get to their destination. Leveraging on the new information, they were able to make decisions that got them to their destination – in the way they wanted.

The importance of knowing which type of road to travel

On the new Michelin map that Gary bought, it was clearly indicated the roads that were busy with heavy traffic (RED), roads that were well-travelled but not as busy as the red roads (YELLOW), and the quiet, narrow country roads that branched off the red and yellow roads (WHITE).

Below is a brief summary of how Gary drew parallels to the different paths taken by business:

Traveling on the Red Road

Busy, Fast, Direct-www.freefoto.com

Travelling on the red road means that your destination is predetermined – which evidently takes away the need to take risks or to find new roads. With conventional wisdom built from the many who have travelled the same broad road, there is far less risk to be taken.

However, being on the red road comes with lots of distraction in the form of noise and the dangers posed by external factors. Very often, red road companies also have a risk adverse culture and also do not cultivate a culture of trust or honesty. After all, all secondary agenda must suit the primary one.

RED Road Characteristic:	Company on the RED Road
Wide Fast Direct Places risk in the hands of others About the destination	Key business agenda: Financial gain, and Maximising shareholder value Employees and other non-profit oriented goals are secondary. Relies on the market, shareholders, the board, advisors and conventional wisdom in decision making

Traveling on the White Road

Adventure, Explore New Boundaries, Creative - www.freefoto.com

Companies that travel on the white road enjoy the adventure that comes with challenging norms, exploring new routes and doing things better, but differently. There really isn’t an ultimate destination even though there are goals to meet and plans to make. White road companies also travel lighter and have a simpler structure, which also becomes a driving force to do more with less – leading to innovative thoughts and methods.

To be a white road company, there must be a culture of trust, sense of humour and the ability to be open to change.

WHITE Road Characteristic:	Company on the White Road
Undeveloped, not often traveled Narrow Presents surprises – good and bad Places risk in your own hands About the journey	Key Business Agenda: Upholds the corporate value to make a positive impact on all stakeholders, including sustaining shareholders, employees, partners, customers, the community, and perhaps, even the planet’s well-being and interests. Sustains core corporate values and ideals that don’t change Decision making based on what the customer wants

Making sense of maps and roads

The Red and White Road philosophy is really two different sides of a coin. There isn’t a better or worse, or right or wrong model.

If you are an employee in an organisation, you’ll need to work for the right type of organisation that supports your needs and personality – if you want to enjoy your work, and not just “work”.

I’ve had the luxury of experiencing what it is like to work in large and small organisations. I can say that while I enjoyed the financial and welfare perks of working for a large organisation, there wasn’t much leeway to break away from the norm to explore new roads. Progress was linear at best.

I realised that through my experience, the environment I thrived best was when there was ample opportunity to be creative and push boundaries, transparency to see the impact of my work on the organisations progress, and to be a part of the organisation, not a cog in the system. In other words, I would be happy in a white road type organisation.

If you are a business owner, you’ll need to know what you really want for, and from, the business. I’ve had savvy business people whose advice is to build and sell the business to recoup my investment and retire early with a nice fortune that I could also use to build another business.

I balked. Mainly because my business plan was different. Adonai Group would be a business that would sustain my needs and personal goals for my entire life time. Just as important, I had envisioned Adonai Group to be a vehicle that positively impacts the lives of its stakeholders – employees, clients, partners, suppliers. My primary agenda for Adonai Group is not about dollars and cents – but about building a legacy, and everything else serves this agenda.

Since the day I started the company, I’ve enjoyed the process of growth – personally and professionally. Mistakes are painfully unforgiving to the coffers, but these mistakes form a priceless insight and determination to do better, and to be more innovative.

As for companies, you’ll need to know if travelling on the red or white road serves the primary corporate agenda. At the end of the day, whether your organisation is on the red or white road one, just make sure you get the right map.

When a “Goliath” (Microsoft) is called an underdog

What a coincidence! When I posted last week on how being innovative can help businesses be more competitive – whether they were a “David” or “Goliath” -type business – I never thought that I would be able to write a followup to the post so quickly till I read this story on The Huffington Post.

The Scandal!

Apparently on Wednesday, Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg did a press release with Microsoft to announce the Bing and Facebook partnership.  where he was quoted saying:

“The thing that makes Microsoft a great partner for us is that they really are the underdog…”

and he followed up that statement with:

“Because of that, they’re in a structural position where they’re incentivized to just go all out and innovate… rapidly trying to gain share by doing stuff no one has done before.”

Is Microsoft really an “underdog”?

While it created a nice little morning scandal, I think that Zuckerberg’s reference was referring to Microsoft’s forays and efforts in the social networking scene.

But to Microsoft’s credit, Zuckerberg also recognised that the tech “Goliath” had the structural position to engage in a process of re-invention and innovation. And by structural position, I’m sure it also included resources.

In my earlier post, I had defined what it took to be a “David” and a “Goliath” type organisation. And since Microsoft had the “structural position”[in other words, leadership (some would say is debatable)the billion dollar war chest, distribution channels,  partnerships, etc], this was no “David”.

So Microsoft is a “Goliath” (albeit an “underdog” in the social networking space.)

I had mentioned that in order to for a “Goliath” to be innovative, it needed to have a spirit of entrepreneurship as its engine to spur change in that direction. So, here we see Microsoft’s Bing team, breaking away from Microsoft’s usual practice of giving us what they think we need – in the way they think we need it – to understanding what we want in terms of a search – relevance, intuition, organisation and the social experience. Now, I’m not really a tech analyst or watcher, so I’ll just turn this conversation back to the business concepts behind Microsoft’s new “underdog” competitive position.

In fact, I think if Microsoft continues reinventing itself and manages to translate its success across its product range, the idea of being an “underdog” should be a badge of honor because it just means there is still the possibility that you would be the one with the breakthrough. Even better, when coupled with an abundance of resources.

After innovating, then what?

I think Microsoft should take a leaf from Apple’s “Business Sustainability” manual (if one exists). A great example of its superior sustainability capabilities is its ability to replicate the success of one platform and translate it  across multiple platforms. For example, the App Store for iPhone apps, being replicated for its iPad, and now the latest update that there would be an App Store for Macs too! It’s a simple but innovative idea. And many organisations, not just Microsoft, could learn from it.

Parting Words

Finally, whether your organisation is a David, Goliath, underdog or champion – it is a matter of whether your organisation has the right “structural position” to sustain growth by constantly reinventing and innovating at every critical point.

If you want to book an appointment in 2011, please call again in 2011…

Recently, I met up with someone important who told me to make an appointment with his office to continue the discussion in detail.

So I sent a nice email requesting for one within the following weeks of December. A few days later, I got a call from his office informing me that the appointment slots for 2010 was full. So naturally, I asked if the appointment could be made for 2011. To my surprise, I was told “If you need to make an appointment for 2011, you’ll have to call back in 2011″.

I was, as Alice would say of her adventures in Wonderland, “curiouser and curiouser”. So I probed further, asking if it was because the PA didn’t possess a diary for the new year (a weak excuse, but I had to see where this was going).

Sad to say, the inquiry didn’t go far as I was told “I don’t know. I was just told to tell you to call back next year if you want an appointment for next year”. 

Recovering from the senseless episode, it occurred to me that there was a culture of “Just do. Don’t ask” within the organisation. I could easily pin-point the problem to fact that the staffers came from an era where hierarchical structures were the norm and no one, NO ONE, could question the norm. I could have easily blamed the PA for not attending professional business and etiquette courses, but that too, was not the problem.

The problem lay with the leadership.

From observation of that organisation’s dynamics (let’s give the organisation a name – Company JDDA for “Just Do, Don’t Ask”), I realised that the main perpetrator of the Company JDDA culture was the very same person I was seeking an appointment with.

I remember sitting in his office listening to the conversation between him and his PA. To my recollection, his PA had entered the room with the purpose of clarifying the delivery of a message– to which he answered “Just do as you are told” and promptly dismissed her. I could have excused what I had witnessed as an anomaly, but this behaviour proliferated in each staff that it was hard to discount the influence of the behaviour emanated from the leadership, and the power of reinforcing behaviour that subsequently “flowed from the throne room” to the rest of the organisation.

What I just described is not exclusive to Company JDDA. In fact, I would imagine this type of behavior being the norm in many organisations – even in “efficient” economies like Singapore, where the term “OB” marker (acronym for “Out of Bounds”) was coined to erect invisible boundary lines for public discussion.

It wouldn’t even be hard to be believe if I went further to state that it would also be the norm to pay lip service to the concepts of “Autonomy”, “Mastery”, “Purpose” and  “Open conversation” – key ingredients to generate good ideas, as my friend Keith De La Rue (http://delarue.net/blog/)  twittered recently.

Looking at Company JDDA, I’m not surprised that its growth has stagnated in the recent years, and there are constant bickering between its staff and associates, and within the associates themselves. This is most unfortunate. What’s more, neither leader, staff body or associates in Company JDDO seem to know any better; and if they do, no one wants to rock the boat.

If you identify yourself or your organisation with what I’ve shared (true story!), I’m glad – because acknowledging this blind spot is already a step forward in the right direction. What needs to be done next is to be “gently” proactive in the changes you want to make as there will be a lot of unlearning (of counter-productive behaviour) and re-learning (of productive behaviour) by everyone.

Lessons on innovation from a culinary lecture

I always believe that we can learn from everything we read, see and encounter. This morning, I came across an article (http://bit.ly/dM0RDt) featuring a lecture at Harvard’s Science and Cooking symposium where celebrity chef David Chang of Momofuku spoke on “Creative Ceilings: How We Use Errors, Failure and Physical Limitations as Catalysts for Culinary Innovation”. In the article, Chang was quoted saying, “Momofuku is about trying to understand that we’re average, and work harder at it than anyone else.”

Very simply and realistically put, Chang defined the driving force behind innovation.

Here are the key points of his lecture:

• If you accept failure, you can create with freedom.
• Define boundaries in order to better analyze mistakes.
• Be careful what you wish for.
• Invent the alternative when you can’t afford the obvious.

I really liked this article for two reasons: Firstly, because it was about food. Secondly, because it reinforced what I thought was needed for organisations (any industry, any size) to be competitive. Let’s see what innovation can do in a David versus Goliath business face-off.

David-type organisation: Young, Small but Full of Potential, Little Resources

If you’ve read the story about David and Goliath, you’d know that before David stepped onto the battlefield for his face off with Goliath, King Saul tried to outfit David with conventional armor, a heavy sword and shield. David couldn’t move.

So instead of following the conventional dress code for war, David played on his strength and went into battle wearing his usual clothing, armed only with smooth stones and a sling – tools he used to defend his father’s sheep from predators. You know the rest of the story.

Anyway, as the David in a business context, you’d already know you don’t have the same financial muscle or talent at your disposal to undertake the same project scale as the big boys do. So what do you do?

You look for a unique proposition you can offer and specialise in that. So what if you don’t have the talent? You build alliances with associates and partners to get the job done – and with lower fixed overheads. Like David, don’t copy what everyone else is doing, take an idea from somewhere else and create your own version of it to create better value than  conventional practices.

Be a creator!

Goliath-type  organisation: Large, Powerful, Resource rich

As Goliath, you are in a great position with financial muscle and talent at your disposal. The down side is that you also carry a lot of “weight” and therefore change cannot happen as quickly. I know that in the David versus Goliath story, Goliath gets his head chopped off! But since we are on the topic of innovation, here’s my take on how to “change” the ending.

Goliath, you innovate!

My suggestion is that to do this, you must take the essence of your enemy – David – and build that into your corporate DNA. Let me explain within the business context.

The Spirit of Entrepreneurship

I’m not going to go into the details here but I would recommend that before any change is made, your Goliath first needs to look at himself, not his weapon or armor. But to look within! For changes from within, will naturally show on the outside.

As a starting point to innovating, your organisation will need to cultivate a spirit of entrepreneurship throughout all levels of employees from its CEO to the shop floor assistant. This would mean reassessing the corporate environment, the mindset of its leadership, and the reward structure.

With an organisation-wide culture of entrepreneurial thinking (even if in varying degrees), established organisations have a greater chance of breaking from the confines of legacy practices and mindsets that hinder competitive sustainability through innovation.

Entrepreneurial thinking within your organisation will also provide the freedom for its employees to question convention and explore alternatives to do the same thing, but more efficiently or cheaply. Or both. In other words, it opens up a whole platter of options which is the petri dish for innovation.

Now, the problem with Goliath in the David and Goliath story was that Goliath was also an arrogant man. Just on his army strength alone, he could have wiped out the entire Israeli army. But in his arrogance, he issued a “man-to-man” challenge with the incentive of the losing party withdrawing their troops.

If you think about it, if David was arrogant about his new found celebrity status as the Defender of Israel, he could have succumbed under the weight of his protective gear and died before the first blow from Goliath. Imagine that possibility.

So to conclude, being innovative in your David or Goliath sized organisation is a good strategic move . But if your David or Goliath lacks the humility to provide the freedom to question convention, then your organisation can forget about innovation.