The matter at issue is innovation, which is vital to the present and future performance of the entrepreneur - meaning not just innovation, but sustaining innovation. It's generally believed that small companies are better at innovation than large: that the lack of innovatory pay-off gets more marked as the organisation gets larger: that creativity can't be managed, nor innovation planned: and that success (paradoxically, in view of the feelings about size) is a function of the amount spent.
Fortunately for the entrepreneur, all these beliefs are wrong. For a start, the beliefs refer to product innovation above all - not to new processes, either in the provision of goods or services, or in the workings of the organisation. You can, in fact, devise an innovatory process for innovation. In personal computers, where product life-cycles are less than a year, or in microprocessors, where two years is a luxury, unresting innovation has to be the rule.
If the Intels of the world can hit stretching innovatory goals in technologically complex products, other entrepreneurs surely can. That starts with setting targets, Proceed on a hit-or-miss basis, and, not surprisingly, many misses result. But setting the targets is only a start: implementation is the decisive challenge. Even in firms with a high innovative reputation, like Hewlett-Packard and 3M, innovators have often had to fight tooth and nail to force their ideas past obstacle after obstacle into the marketplace.
That happened with 3M's Post-It pads. Sony's Walkman, Raytheon's microwave oven and JVC's video cassette recorder also had to overcome political difficulties beside which the technical problems seemed simple. As Edward de Bono has noted, companies can find all too many reasons for not turning their general intention to be creative into any form of reality:
1. Specific urgent matters take precedence over creativity.
2. Nobody knows exactly what to do - though steps like appointing 'champions' of innovation are perfectly feasible.
3. Reluctance rules - they would be creative if they could, but they can't.
4. They pay lip-service to their own imagined creativity.
5. They think creativity os the prerogative of brilliant natural talents or good luck - and that it can't be worked for.
6. They can't handle any more new ideas.
7. They don't recognise the unused brainpower in the organisation.
8. They reckon they can wait for somebody else to innovate, and then follow.
9. The boss doesn't make innovation his or her great cause.
10. It's left to somebody else - especially the R&D people - rather than madeinto everybody's responsibility.
That's an impressive number of reasons for lack of innovative thinking, and there are others: bureaucratic red tape, preoccupation with today at the expense of tomorrow, and no top management support for innovation. Ally these with lack of funding and an organisation structure that discourages innovation, and you practically guarantee that you won't get enough new products or ideas. But the innovations that change the business don't have to be your own.
Aall the brilliant hardware and software generated in Silicon Valley, Seattle and elsewhere is fully available, along with superb application skills. That's manna from Heaven for ambitious entrepreneurs who know that information technology can supply a competitive edge and are prepared to adopt the radical, progressive attitudes required to win that prize: in a word, to innovate.
While it's not true that innovation is a small company preserve, the entrepreneur has a flying start - because small, controllable and focused units are inherently more innovative. The entrepreneurial culture can also encourage the necessary spirit by making innovation a line manager's responsibility. Gear both reports and rewards in part towards the manager's success in promoting and producing new products and ideas and you'll get more of both.
You can turn managers into entrepreneurial innovators by such means. If isn't true that creativity can't be taught, but is innate and confined to a few true innovators. Thinkers and writers like Mark Brown, of Innovation Centre Europe, Edward de Bono and Simon Majaro have demonstrated ways in which organisations and the individuals inside them can become more creative. Brown, for instance, advocates Total Innovation Management, in which the key acronym is GISA, standing for 'goals, ideas, selection/control and action.' If any of the four parts is missing, the effort to innovate will fail: so creative teams must be balanced to ensure the necessary combination of natural bents.
In the end, people determine the outcome. Research has shown that, perversely, managers are more inclined to take innovative risks in bad times than in good. Entrepreneurs know better. Innovate at all times, and only the good ones will roll.
