Absolut Innovation

If companies as we understand them today, had existed in Greece, one day, Aristotle could have made this simple judgment.

• Companies are made of individuals.
• Individuals are made of a myriad of influences: personality, environment, education, interests, etc...
• Innovation is based on individuals ideas.Therefore it is rational to conclude that company's ability to innovate depends on individuals ability to innovate.

But...

• Are innovators born?
• Does everybody have the capacity to innovate?
• Why are some people reluctant to any sort of change?
• Why is innovation mythified?

All these are questions with answers but it would be really difficult to find a universal solution to satisfy the different parts that forms companies.However, as individuals develop themselves they may be confronted at any time to little innovation decisions. The reason is that innovation is a key aspect in the evolution of men and companies. But we can perceive a general conflict that can spoil the companies interest to generate new ideas, products and procedures.

Some individuals are reluctant to change and innovation is particularly based on creativity, openmindeness and propensity to change

Definition

The Webster Dictionary of the English language defines innovation as:

Innovate, in'no vãt, v.t.‡--innovated, innovating. [L. innovo, innovatum, to renew-in, intens., and novus, new (whence novel). NEW.] To change or alter by introducing something new.--v.i. To introduce novelties; to make changes in anything established: with on or in (to innovate on established customs)

Innovation,in no vã'shon,n. The act of innovating; change made in established laws, customs, rites, and practices by the introduction of something new.

Innovator, in'-no vã tèr, n One who innovates.

This definition recognizes a direct link between innovation and creativity. In fact, innovation is an expression of human creativity. Creativity could be defined either as the art of finding new ways to do the same things or the ability to generate new scenarios where we can apply what we learned somewhere else. Both concepts introduce a new idea of 'changing as a way of progressing'. But changes had never been easy to pursue, the reason is that as changes begun to takes place many different barriers appear in individuals reluctant to change.This is probably linked to the specific definition of individual and also how they have been perceived. Individuals had been seen as a kind of machine for information processing. But this is not the aim itself. Creating new knowledge is not simply a matter of processing objective information (Nonaka, 1991) cause the knowledge and wisdom of a person can be divided in two areas:

• • What we see outside and we make ours, in other words it is what we learn
  • What we discover ourselves with or without the aid of the rests of knowledges we learnt before.

The innovation concept fits more in the second than in the first area as it is a feat not of intellect, but of will, it is an attitude, a spirit, something inherent to the individual. As Schumpeter put it 'it is not the knowledge that matters, but the successful solution of the task sui generis of putting an untried method into practice'Taylor defines the essence of innovation as 'discovering what the organization is uniquely at and taking advantage of those capabilities'. The problem derived from his approach is that could become worrying the future of a company whose managers consider to be the best of the market in doing something cause a principal issue of competitive strategy is to sustain the competitive advantages. Under the word sustaining we should understand changing, adapting, doing something, innovating... to maintain what we have achieved. Nowadays, to achieve this goal it is difficult to think of another alternative different that innovation. But it is important to remark that innovation should not be understood as a goal itself it is rather a mean, a 'never-ending' process to obtain the mentioned competitive advantages.The final objective is to build a continuously innovating company.

But how can we get such a difficult idea?

Could innovation be taught?

Probably not. Rather than a static teaching process, innovation is a common learning process. In fact some authors affirms that 'innovation is everywhere, but the problem is learning from it' (Brown, 1991). The solution is simpler that the myth; every one can learn from everyone. It is not worth going to look for innovation outside the company because most of the times it will reside inside. It is the idea that Peter Senge introduced with his best seller The Fifth Discipline or the ability of some organizations to learn "one from each other". Some characteristics of those companies are:

• the importance of acquiring, improving and transferring knowledge
• facilitating and making use of individual learning
• modifying behaviour and practices to reflect the learning

Innovation: 'Company's headache'

Companies try to keep pace with rapid changes in technology and cope with increasingly unstable business environments in order to improve competitiveness. Professor Michael Porter even subordinates the position of a whole nation to the capacity of its industry to innovate and upgrade.Trying to model the problem that most of the companies find when they try to innovate we have come out with the idea of an iceberg which may be useful to illustrate this paper.If we compare a company with an iceberg, two areas could be identified:

• Surface: what is done, tested or implemented
• Hidden assets: ideas that did never come truth

1/7 (or even less) of the innovative assets of a company are implemented, the 6/7 rest belongs to the world of pure invention but not innovation. It means that they remain at the intellectual level, something which is discovered but is not implemented, commercialised or used. Why? Just because there are some barriers to overcome.The most common barrier to innovation is that it has to pass the cultural test, though not necessarily the money test - in any event in the short term. It is sadly thruth that we live trapped in a short term cage. In today's management, tactics have become more important than strategies but not just because of tactic's impact on profits but mainly because of the short term (immediate) effect. This is way many people think up new ideas all the time, but do nothing with them. The reasons for this behaviour, the rational of those barriers, are 'newness' and 'uncertainty' what is too different from what we see is perceived more as a threat than as an opportunity.But instead of analyzing the barriers and risks that innovation may present some authors justify innovation guessing out the risks of not innovating.If a company does not innovate, once will loose its competitive position, cause in business nothing lasts forever without those changes we announced before.

Company's levers to change

3 generic aspects can be identified to sharpen an organization's receptivity to change:

Management should encourage employees to achieve the idea underlying in the model:

almost everything under the floating line should find its way to be implemented

The goal is to turn new ideas into concrete realities instead of focusing in re-arranging things which already exist.To achieve this, Pearson identifies the following operational factors:

FIVE STEPS TO BECOME MORE DYNAMIC AND INNOVATIVE

• Creating corporate environment, which puts constant pressure on everyone to beat specific competitors at innovation
• Structuring the organization so innovation is promoted rather that thwarted
• Developing a realistic strategic focus to channel innovative efforts
• Knowing where to look for good ideas and how to leverage the business system to leverage them once they have been located
• Pursuing good ideas at full speed after they have been developed with all the company's resourcesAll these steps in most of the cases fail at the time of implementation. As it happens in most of the companies, what separates the winners and losers in innovation is who masters the drudgery of reducing the idea to practice (Taylor, 1990). Innovation without implementation is like a word without letters. But who should be in charge of undertaking these innovations...

Where should then lie the innovation spirit?

Two answers could easily be prompted. Immediate answers would include either the employees or the management of the company. In fact each of these possibilities respond to the traditional approaches identified in many business practices:

In both cases, a hypothesis is assumed: genuine innovation resides inside the company. In most of the cases, technological and creative wealth is generated in the company. 'Imported innovations' are more costly in capital and in time investment than those developed internally. Moreover, it is often the case that when innovation is transferred from a different company, recipient employees resist changes and may suffer from a 'not-invented-here' syndrome, risking the feasibility of the implementation.

Three ways of implementing

It has been confirmed in many surveys that the key aspect is implementation. This paper does not mean to propose just a descriptive approach. To avoid it, after the explanation of the two traditional approaches to innovation a new creative method of innovation will be proposed.

Bottom-up

It is the logical sense of the innovation as workers at the operational levels are more likely to discover ways of improvement. This direction is required in any company. It is one of the basics of Japanese kaizen. The main drawback of this approach is that management may not be persuaded to innovate and employee's efforts to innovate may end in frustration and demotivation.Therefore a cautious approach may be taken in the early stages of the bottom up method.

Top-down

A top-down approach may become a problem if employees are not persuaded that it is necessary cause it will fail at the implementation.But it is often the case that primary bottle-neck to a firm's progress in not focused on the operational level but rather in management's innovation. To avoid this potential problem, open and objective communication between people and between organizations results essential(Stata, 1989).This approach may also create a feeling of insecurity since external knowledge is introduced in the company.The positive point is that management usually has a wider scope than employees and therefore they may be more capable to decide with an strategic global approach.

Conclusion: Absolute-innovation

In 1958, Leavitt and Whisler wrote a controversial article in which they held that the combination of management science and information technology would prompt a shrinkage of middle management ranks and greater centralization during the 1980s. Technology will enable managers to shape their organizations. Workers will be given more autonomy and more room for creativity. Work will focus on projects and processes rather than tasks and procedures (Applegate, Cash & Mills, 1988).In an economy founded on innovation and change, one of the premier challenges of management is to design more flexible organizations (Hirschorn & Gilmore, 1992) according to the principle that structure follows strategy. More important than salaries, bonuses, or promotions, individual recognition is the key factor in motivating people to innovate (Taylor, 1990): Until now this has been the case of the Japanese.Only by taking employees' personal goals and combining then with organizational goals is it possible to develop deep, companywide commitment to a common strategic vision (Joiner, 1989).

Innovation should be undertaken at all levels of the company. A key factor of success is that basic one of collaboration and communication. Each employee should be considered as an intrapreneur. The independent intrapreneur is prepared to commit ideas, time and what is more scarce, emotional resources in exchange for the control over a project (McKinney & McKinney 1989). However, the entrepreneurial element must be present in both the new "intrapreneurial" venture and the highest level of the corporate decision-making structure. The logic is simple: Size and bureaucracy are enemies of innovation. In an big environment (more than two hundred people becomes more difficult to innovate).But ideas do not have to come imperatively from the employees. They can also come also from outside the company, rather than limiting themselves to a passive search for ideas and information De Meyer suggest that companies should actively invite partners to solve problems for them. The potential benefits of innovation should be used as a carrot to turn interested parties into partners .One final remark before finishing would be based in the idea that innovation does not have to mean radical changes. To be waiting for the great idea may be a bad idea since any change (even small ones) may give the appropriate circumstances for a further development.If it would be ridiculous to think of a company that lets go some market share it is even more to think of a company that neglects part of its innovative capital.The conclusion of the paper would not include views on problems and advantages of innovating but seen from a point of innovating as a unique way to survive.