Serial Innovators by Griffin Abbie. Vojak Bruce A. Price Raymond L

Author:Griffin, Abbie.,Vojak, Bruce A.,Price, Raymond L.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2012-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

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* See Chapter 5 for details.

5

CHARACTERISTICS OF SERIAL INNOVATORS

What makes someone willing to tackle seemingly impossible problems and to stay engaged with them over several years as the understanding of customers and technology comes together to allow them to create a breakthrough new product? Why would someone struggle against an organizational culture that doesn’t seem to see the value of their contributions and, in fact, may actively try to suppress their contributions? How can someone delay personal gratification for several years until the final product comes to market and customers are thrilled with the results? These are just a few of the questions we asked as we wondered about the makeup of Serial Innovators. We wanted to know what made them tick and what prepared them to face the customer, technical, organizational, and personal challenges they found in bringing breakthrough new products to market over and over again. An early survey revealed that Serial Innovators emerge at between five and fifteen years of experience within a given organization. They seem to number somewhere between one out of fifty to one out of two hundred for research and development (R&D) and engineering staff, where those ratios vary depending on the size of the company—smaller companies have a higher ratio of Serial Innovators and larger companies have a smaller ratio. In fact, we estimate that the range is closer to one in five hundred in most very large (Fortune 200) companies. There are two primary reasons for Serial Innovators’ relatively small numbers:

1. Their unique sets of skills and capabilities exist in only a small number of people.

2. Organizations are sometimes unable to use the talents of those who in fact do have those skills (Christensen 1997).

In sum, Serial Innovators are few and far between because breakthrough innovation talent is rare and it is challenging for organizations to accept Serial Innovators and what they create. Indeed, companies can be so focused on current product lines and short-term growth that they become unwilling or unable to invest in people who can provide them with new products or product lines that would move them into new white space in the longer term.

Many companies do not have the absorptive capacity to bring a large number of significantly new products to market. Companies have limited R&D budgets and, hence, the number of Serial Innovators they can support is limited, simply because having too many could overwhelm manufacturing and marketing capabilities for new products. Given the difficulty of identifying, recruiting, developing, and managing employees who challenge the organization, the product lines, and the basic assumptions held by many managers in the company, many organizations find it difficult to accept Serial Innovators. Barney Oliver, the iconoclast leader of HP Labs, once quipped: “How many geniuses will you have in a company of ten? The answer was one. In a company of one hundred? The answer was two. In a company of one thousand? The pattern is clear—three. In a company of ten thousand? The answer was zero instead of four—all of the geniuses and innovators would be driven out of the larger company.

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