Spotting Innovation Theatre
I was still pretty new to the innovation space when I first came across the term “innovation theatre”, famously coined by Steve Blank. At that point in time, I was elbow deep in the trenches of both internal and external innovation work. Concurrently, there were many major organisations which had publicly announced their pursuit in innovation projects. It was as though everyone else was jumping on the bandwagon which got me curious, then quickly sceptical, about an organisation’s true intent to pursue innovation.
The definition of innovation theatre is straightforward — it refers to any innovation work which is done to show people that innovation is happening, but which doesn’t result in a tangible outcome¹. For someone with little exposure to this space, it is natural to be drawn to the glitz attached to innovation. You are captivated by the theatrics that have been laid out on stage — the beanbags, colourful sticky notes, the use of agile methodology, etc — and as an audience, you rarely have privy to the good, the bad and the reality that lie behind the scenes.
Over the past two years, I have picked up a number of smokescreens which may signal innovation theatre at play. This is not meant to be prescriptive but if any of the following resonates, perhaps it is worthwhile asking discerning questions to your management to understand the tangible objective for pursuing innovation.
1. Innovation activities with no genuine skin in the game
Running innovation activities such as hackathons, pre-accelerator or accelerator programs to solicit fresh ideas and new partnerships (usually with entrepreneurs or start-ups) is a common first foray into corporate innovation. We can easily hear the bells and whistles through social media postings and PR materials but the actual litmus test is to see what happens during and after the activity has completed.
Start-ups/Entrepreneurs which/who have participated in such activities give some of the best insights into this. And gripes such as corporates not adopting the winning solution or being mostly unreachable during the journey are telling signs to how vested they really are.
2. Imbalanced calibre in the Innovation department
When recruiting for the Innovation department, it might seem intuitive to look inward and pick the best-performing employees to start with. If they can do well in Sales/Engineering/Operations then they surely can also do well in Innovation, right?
The other misconception about innovation is that depending on the nature of the business, its work resides in only one specific business unit. Having sat in many sales pitches by start-ups, I have anecdotally heard corporates delegating innovation work to the IT or Engineering department because it “makes sense”.
Truth is, the beauty of innovation lies in that it cuts across different functions, and it is the blend of diverse perspectives from employees with different backgrounds and capabilities that produce out of the box ideas. According to this HBR article², transformation-capable teams have to be “made up of people who are not only high performers, but who hold a unique balance of skills and mindsets that allow them to sustain focus, agility, and optimism in the face of uncertainty for prolonged periods of time.”
3. Legacy processes and bureaucracy still exist
An important responsibility of the Innovation department, when it is first formed, is to break down as much archaic thinking and legacy processes that traditionally exist in large and/or older firms. The bureaucracy can be detrimental to both internal and external stakeholders. It firstly goes against the “Fail fast, Learn Fast” principle and makes it challenging to convince departments to test new ways of working.
It is also the frustration of many external partners such as start-ups which are keen to partner with corporates but do not necessarily have the cashflow to withstand long internal approval processes. Think about it — if it already frustrates you, as an employee, to go through an internal procurement process, it is probably many times more frustrating for an external party. And is it worthwhile sacrificing a great innovation adoption because of paperwork?
4. The entire organisation is not on board
It saddens me to hear when an Innovation team and its work are treated in isolation from the rest of the organisation. Innovation is not just a special one-time project because any work produced has the potential to fundamentally improve an organisation’s bottom-line and/or expand its value to customers.
In my experience, I have witnessed opposing views and incoherent instructions from management teams who were driving internal innovation. Such behaviours usually bring about more chaos to a highly-volatile environment, that is innovation, and is often counter-productive. To this end, I see the importance of the leadership to be truly on board in order to influence the rest of the organisation to contribute to any form of innovation work.
Admittedly, these are challenging barriers for any organisation to overcome and it will take time to foster the ideal culture and environment for innovation to perpetuate. However if the organisation does not allocate resources to address these issues and yet portrays to be conducting innovation work, then it begs the question of innovation theatre being at play.
[2] https://hbr.org/2018/11/if-your-innovation-effort-isnt-working-look-at-whos-on-the-team
