Abstract
The word innovation is widely referred to in business circles as the next level of competitive advantage. However, for many organizations today, it lacks tangibility as managers struggle with developing an innovation orientation that provides sustainable value creation. Using a mixed methods research approach, the aim and contribution of this paper is to report the qualitative findings of Fortune 1000 (F1000) organizations concerning their efforts to implement innovation agendas. Over 1100 business leaders were surveyed, which proves to be one of the largest surveys of innovation to date amongst the F1000. This article sets out to answer three basic questions as it concerns the implementation of an innovation agenda in organizations. These questions include: What does innovation mean to organizations? What has been the biggest challenges to introducing and sustaining an innovation orientation? And what has worked well in supporting an innovation orientation? What we have discovered is that leaders’ thoughts on innovation are anchored on the need for changing the status quo and trying something new. They are also particularly aware of the correlation between innovation and performance. The change theme is further echoed as the predominant barrier to change. That is, breaking the inertia of the status quo is seen as one of the top barriers to innovation. Further, our findings identified six common challenges to introducing, executing and sustaining innovation. These barriers revolve around resistance to change, organizational process, leadership, funding and resources, the external environment, and customer adoption. Finally, there are a cluster of activities that have worked well to support successful implementation of an innovation orientation in organizations. Important activities such as leadership for innovation, knowledge management, organizational structures and processes, and aligned performance management were identified by leaders as noteworthy to successful innovation.
Highlights
One of the world’s greatest modern day innovators, the late Mr Steve Jobs weighed in on innovation in 1998, when he asked whether we were ‘getting it’? This is a valid question as research shows that organizations still struggle with innovation
The focus of this article is on the qualitative findings of the Fortune 1000 (F1000), the quantitative findings provide a baseline perspective that provides a lens for the findings and conclusions as it concerns the qualitative data1
We can conclude from the empirical data that F1000 organizations are likely average when it comes to innovation
Summary
One of the world’s greatest modern day innovators, the late Mr Steve Jobs weighed in on innovation in 1998, when he asked whether we were ‘getting it’? This is a valid question as research shows that organizations still struggle with innovation. A recent industry study undertaken by Accenture (2013) revealed that only 18% of executives believe their company’s innovation efforts deliver a competitive advantage Both Mr Job’s insight, and the Accenture study among others, take on an even greater significance in a time when North America continues to struggle to sustain its GDP position amongst the world’s largest economies (Economist, 2014). The Wall Street Journal reported that the word “innovation” in the U.S was used over 33,000 times in 2012 in quarterly and annual reports, that it has been in the subject title of nearly 300 books published during that period, and that almost one-third of U.S business schools use the word in their mission statement (Kwoh, 2012) This suggests that there are a lot of things we already know about innovation – but put, “are we getting it”, or has innovation become a ubiquitous term? This suggests that there are a lot of things we already know about innovation – but put, “are we getting it”, or has innovation become a ubiquitous term? We set out to answer these questions, and more importantly, to find out what the major challenges are, and what works and what doesn’t
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