The art of innovation

Professor Dueck, you spent 25 years at IBM always trying to come up with something new. Is that so easy in a corporation?

Yes, it is possible! I had some apprenticeship years or honorary rounds, which could certainly have been made shorter with intrapreneurship training.

Intrapreneurs are considered "white-collar entrepreneurs" who creatively get down to business ...

Yes, but that has to be trained! Innovators must not only be allowed to be entrepreneurial, as is always loudly demanded, but they must also be capable of it and have talent. This is often forgotten.

Innovation management helps?

Innovation management only "allows" to do something, and then it demands quite banal-naively the full success of the efforts. Innovation management allows a person who has the idea for a new recipe to buy the ingredients for this recipe, i.e. a kind of investment, and then to cook the new dish according to the idea. That is then the realization. Whether the person with the idea is good at all

Innovation management falls short

innovation management is usually not interested in.

Permanent change is propagated as a success factor for companies. Nevertheless, you say, nothing really new is happening ...

Innovation has something to do with a confident will. You go into the future joyfully and energetically. Later, the other companies understand where the journey is going. They have to follow suit now. At this point, it's no longer fun. I always say: Innovation is like wanting, change is like having to. Change is innovation forced by circumstances, a reaction to incipient Darwinian selection. For example, in the old days, when an ice age came, the first people got animal skins. Others waited until they were half frozen and then looked for animal skins, but there were hardly any left ...

Can you name the main attitudes that prevent innovation?

Innovations are not directly prevented, they usually fail because they are supposed to be managed like normal, well-known day-to-day business. You have sales estimates, cost rates and profit expectations. Everything is more or less known, there are rules and procedures. Innovations first have to find their final form, you have to try them out and change them again and again, depending on what the first interested parties and later customers say. This entrepreneurial approach is quite alien and even "suspicious" or inappropriate to managing the day-to-day business. Because this is so, all managers are good at day-to-day business management and almost none as entrepreneurs.

That is, you prefer to tread water ...?

In addition, managers see "success" when the day-to-day business is booming. The fact that banks are disappearing into the Internet, car manufacturers can almost close down with general car sharing, etc. is not the subject of the daily horizon and the salary scales. The future with its current challenges is not really in the consciousness, and when it does flash up, it is not looked at soberly with all its problems, but with forced optimism, something like: "We have to believe wholeheartedly in our traditional business, don't we? Otherwise we might as well close down!"

You describe innovation as a "real obstacle race". Why does everyone have such a hard time with it?

It's not seen as an obstacle course race! The inventors rather expect red carpets. If you're a pro, you know what has to be done and where the obstacles are.

An innovation must inspire

nesses lie. Newcomers tend to react paranoid to obstacles, as if the obstacles were invented for them personally: No one gives money, no one wants risk, it can't be sold, everyone complains! An innovation has to inspire, then doors will open by themselves.

Why should you question what you have been successful with for years with a new idea?

I'm not sure that the inertia for innovation comes from that. More like: the new has to be started small, like having another baby at 60 or planting a walnut tree - the yield comes much later. On top of that, the new thing simply requires new skills that would have to be acquired. Most of the time you shy away from the realization that these new skills are not there, partly because you feel that you probably or perhaps have no talent for the new.

That doesn't sound very optimistic...

Take something as simple as an English teacher from 1970 - he taught English and couldn't do it - every child notices that today because they see English at every turn. Now the English teacher really has to have an oral command of the language himself - that alone is hard. Think this through once in such micro-environments and you will feel how difficult it must be for large companies to lay foundations again joyfully under burning ambition in a new area without experience and the necessary skills.

Every innovation needs a business plan. You compare it to a recipe, where the writer has no idea how to cook...

Because inventors have only invented, but are almost never entrepreneurs, you force them to think about their situation at least once theoretically. This reflection essay is then the business case. For professionals, business cases feel more like straitjackets. Imagine a five-star chef has an amazing recipe idea and you force him to write down how he will cook it step by step - with time schedule and costs! And then he has to document the successful completion of each cooking step!

Learn, experiment and try: Innovators are thus given the

First class entrepreneurs

Life in companies made difficult. What is the reason?

Well, it's because normal management specifies the work step by step and plans and determines the costs and results beforehand. Experimental approaches to what the customer will later buy cannot really be planned, and therefore cannot be managed in the classical way. With management it is very important to have a good plan, with innovation you need a first-class entrepreneur.

Steve Jobs was considered an innovator par excellence. What did Apple do differently?

Steve Jobs was such an entrepreneur, with strong convictions and a tough will to succeed. He is now idolized because he let Apple become the most valuable company. But you can see that Apple also has to "shed its skin" again, because now Samsung is working on the "Internet of Things" in association with Google, while Apple is perhaps striving too hard for power in the purely digital. Samsung will soon put the Android system in all home appliances ... Apple is not on that construction site. The real test a company has is when it has to reinvent itself. That's the art! Apple's stock price is already weather glowing, after all.

What talents and skills do innovators need to bring to the table?

I get asked that so often! Counter question: What skills does a violin star or a five-star chef need? I want to say: The required skills are clear in themselves. The problem is that you have to be really good, not just have skills. A good composition alone does not guarantee a virtuoso performance, a brilliant recipe does not guarantee a feast. Everyone knows that, but when it comes to innovation, most people think that a good idea is half the battle. They think, "I've got the idea, now I'll be a fast entrepreneur." Maybe a good composition really is half the battle, but learning to play the violin or become an entrepreneur takes a couple of years ... It's not going to happen this quarter.

Can agile software development become a model for innovation in companies?

Agile software development is a method for top performers. You see what I mean? Again, the same problem. Most people believe that all you have to do is use the "agile method " and success is guaranteed. So, in our previous "violin context", they believe that just because they have a Stradivarius, they can play wonderful violin solos. They don't want to hear that they also have to be top experts. But innovations are really only about top performers. And then the "agile method" is really appropriate.

Something new can often only prevail if it fits in with the established strategy and structure and causes as little trouble as possible ...

Yes, of course! A good innovator should have the talent to be able to empathize with the structures of a company and somehow make it fit even though it doesn't. A good move comes to mind: you publicly ask the top boss to "let you fucking do it" and you would bet a case of champagne that you alone will innovate the company. Often the bosses would smile and then say, "Okay, you've got a bet, I'll look into it." With this "method" you don't have to write a business case, it's replaced by the bet ... I know it sounds adventurous now, but it works for some strongman bosses. But why? Because innovation requires courage, which is rare. Those who have courage and show assertiveness don't really get much in the way. If you let someone do it, you have to trust them! That is more important than juggling numbers and market figures.

Is it possible to "plan", "steer" and keep under control innovation, which is associated with a great deal of uncertainty?

I don't think so! You especially can't plan when an innovation will make the breakthrough. Often an idea is way too early - heck, most of the time it's too early. Think of the tablet computer "Newton" from Apple a long time ago. Nobody wanted it because the batteries were too weak, the memory too small, the screen too dark when sitting on the park bench - and there was no wireless internet etc., etc.. The Newton PDA came in 1993 and was discontinued by Steve Jobs in 1998. But the structures changed then, the batteries and the net. And lo and behold: suddenly everyone wants it, the iPad ...

Does this sort of thing happen often?

Yes, quite often. Good innovators get a sense of when it's time, most dream too early. Plans don't help, you have to try and feel the response from customers. I'm not saying you don't need a plan! Of course you have to have one, in the sense that you know very well what you are doing. A plan should show you that you have thought of everything, it must convince others that it is possible and worth their cooperation. You have to be able to radiate in all situations that you can do it. You can't do that without a plan.

So more of a guide to action on how to proceed with innovation?

Yes, but today a plan is understood to be an extremely detailed implementation recipe that is applied mercilessly, no matter what happens. The controllers do not control at all, they monitor the execution and scold in case of deviations. You can do that when there are recipes, i.e. in day-to-day business, but not otherwise. You can see what's happening with plans for Stuttgart 21 or the Elbe Philharmonic Hall in Hamburg ... It's an art in itself to get something right the first time.

How does working on and with innovations differ from other, normal work?

Innovation is "meta work

Normal employees work according to a recipe. Process by process, customer by customer. Innovation recreates these recipes. Innovation is a kind of "meta-work", as is all "change management". Work is getting things done in a fixed system of work. Change and innovation work on (not: in) a new system, sometimes evolutionary, sometimes radically destructive or disruptive.

And what is the difference?

We can all cope with a bit of evolution, but really not too much - if the change is a bit bigger, the real "meta work" starts. In management, everyone agrees that change management is the most demanding of all disciplines. And I am amazed by this fact: Isn't non-evolutionary innovation much more difficult than "just" change? With "change" I know the result beforehand - with innovation only roughly. Why is the profession of the innovator so mercilessly underestimated? Yes, and because that's the case, there are a lot of failures. Not only because innovation is difficult - but because people don't understand how difficult it is.

Professor Dueck, thank you very much for the interview.