Create Momentum and Movement
Very often we see companies invest large sums of money in innovation - almost exclusively in technology innovation and design. These companies see innovation and strategy as separate entities. Strategy is determined by the Executive Team, but when it comes to ‘innovation’ they turn to more creative minds. Too often these organisations do not realise the paradox in which they find themselves. They try to innovate in a predefined and conservative framework. It is usually as a result of these constraints, and not the innovation as an idea itself, that ROI is very poor.
Future executives will be those who know how to listen to, and apply, the intelligence of the masses. Current technologies (web 2.0, wikis, etc..), allow for the opening up of the strategic management process, which has traditionally been restricted to the Exeutive Team. This is the most promising indicator that traditional business practices are being challenged.
Using Wikipedia as an example, the project was created six years ago, and currnetly Wikipedia is among the most visited portals on the Internet, being compared to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. A study by the Minnesota University revealed that the articles published in Wikipedia are posted by very few people, in spite of the fact that the concept maintains that any person can edit the entries. It was calculated that only a tenth of 1% of the people that edit Wikipedia pages are responsible for more than half of the total content. The study also revealed that the probability of finding a badly written article or inaccurate information is only 0.0037% (that is, almost nil). And that at least 40% of the cases of vandalism are fixed up in a matter of seconds.
We should probably ask ourselves if many of the problems which we deal with in our organisations could not be resolved better by people ourside of the Management Team, or indeed, outside of the organisation. During the European Innovation Movement Symposium we will demonstrate how Strategy Maps can be used as a co-created tool that can progress orgainsations to resolve these issues. There is no doubt that participation is the key to ensure the commitment and the alignment of the organisation.
