The Accountability Issue
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Filling Out The Too l box
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Outsourced innovation is entering its adolescence. Time now for it to grow up and embrace accountability. BY M A R K PAY N E
WINTER / SPRING 2012
FA H R E N H E I T 2 1 2
Accountability At Wor k .
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IT’S IRONIC BUT TRUE
DELIVER OR GO HOME
IT’S IRONIC, BUT TRUE.
The outsourcing of innovation—the increasingly ubiquitous practice where companies enlist the help of outsiders to transform the altitude and impact of their innovation programs — is ready for a transformation of its own. Over the past decade, most chief execs have come to the realization that ideas born outside their companies are as valuable to their shareholders as ideas born within.
Absent Accountability
Innovation Sphere, Innovation Ingredients, %
They are tapping an expanding roster of external innovation partners to uncover opportunities they can’t readily see themselves, to tease out latent market needs, and to answer them with new products, brands, technologies and businesses more quickly, more effectively, and often with better ROI than they can on their own.
Lateral Thinking
Talent
Promising Methodologies
Good Intentions Accountability 50
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But as the innovation outsourcing movement is catalyzing change and sparking growth, it is also sowing seeds of its own reinvention.
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Because for all the lateral thinking, talent, good intentions and seemingly promising methodologies in circulation, one ingredient remains glaringly rare: accountability.
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This is a surprising thing. Competition is intensifying in every DPODFJWBCMF mFME PG DPNNFSDJBM FOEFBWPS
1. Bubble Wrap: Used for insulation against all things fragile, including a healthy concern over failure.
‘Innovate or die’ is an increasingly common mantra for CEOs and growth strategists alike. It seems implausible that innovation’s rising tide of urgency won’t seep over time into every capillary in the innovation ecosystem, caffeinating everyone it touches with a new edgy intensity and a ‘deliver or go home’ mindset. It’s coming, but it’s not there yet.
It’s as if the innovator’s need to embrace the omnipresent risk of failure has morphed into a sort of psychological bubble wrap—insulating external innovation partners from losing sleep over whether their grand visions of better products, businesses and human experiences ever come to anything more than a pile of Post-it notes and a few fleeting goose bumps in a conference room. 1
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2. Sleepful Nights: An innovation partner’s reward for embracing the psychological bubble wrap.
The shareholders bankrolling the prevailing innovation failure rates will tell you there’s a big difference between accepting failure as a possibility, and accepting it as a normal, consequencefree thing to be shrugged off. For innovation outsourcing to fulfill its great promise and migrate from a new tool in the arsenal to a permanent best practice, its leading players need to drink the Kool-Aid of new accountability. It’s time to draw sharp lines between bona fide value creation and ethereal prognostication that comes to little more than interesting presentations. And to separate the relatively easy business of tabling an intriguing idea from the only endgame shareholders care about —a viable, compelling product, a winning value proposition and a great business. Before we go deeper on how to unlock the movement’s bright-but-different future, there’s important context to be drawn from its past and present.
3. Post-it Notes: Wonderful ideas go here. Be wary though. More often than not, this is as far as a good idea reaches.
4. Goose Bumps: Best saved for key shareholder NFFUJOHT *G POMZ UIFZ XFSF TVGmDJFOU UP EFMJWFS B project to market.
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DELIVER OR GO HOME
SOURCE OF THE OUTSOURCE
SOURCE OF THE OUTSOURCE What sparked the rush of companies throwing open the windows in search of transformational ideas from the outside? The roots run broad and deep, back to the days of disco. In the seventies, the so-called modern corporation was blinded by the era’s GBTIJPOBCMF mYBUJPO XJUI EJWFSTJmDBUJPO *U was a time of head-scratcher moves like soft drink companies buying movie studios and booze makers buying bakeries —delivering near-term spikes to the top MJOF CVU IFBEBDIFT BOE JOFGmDJFODJFT JO equal measure. This period of over-reaching ambition set in motion a long, painful return to growing core business around core competencies. The timing of it all gave the plot an interesting twist. The prodigal return came at a point in history when close-in product proliferation had already run amok. Across industries, the proverbial shelves were, by the early nineties, buckling under the weight of an unprecedented profusion of marginally differentiated new products and services. The consequences were profound for business leaders and consumers alike.
Consumers who were once easily impressed with a tweak of a fender line, the barely new and the marginally improved, were now yawning. This left core competency evangelists in an uncomfortable quandary: they were betting their future on driving core business at a time when the low-hanging fruit had already been plucked.
Sharp Yawn Increase
Product Diversification vs. Consumer Boredom
Number of Product Line Tweaks Consumer Yawns, ‘000,000 5
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They would soon realize that the paradigmbusting lateral thinking they would need to stoke growth in mature core businesses wasn’t a core competency. Need is a mother. Outside help became a necessity.
PERFECT STORM
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PERFECT STORM If the direction of the wind was clear, transformational market forces made it a perfect storm for innovation outsourcing to take flight:
1 2 3 4 5 6 Breakthrough Half-life, Years Global Competitors, ‘000 5 4
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Necessity
In FMCG, the dual threats of increasingly powerful retailers and emboldened private labels were turning breakthrough innovation from a luxury to a survivalist necessity.
Incremental Innovation
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Across industries, nimble global competition was shortening the halflife of the breakthrough to the point that big innovations could no longer be viewed as serendipitous, once-a-decade lightning strikes; driving predictable top line growth demanded a reliable year-onyear pipeline.
A newly connected world was empowering companies to look outside to the proverbial ‘guy in the garage’ with the answers to the problems they couldn’t crack themselves.
Disruptive Innovation
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Paradigm-busting success stories from Starbucks to the Mini Cooper, Red Bull to Swiffer, and the iPod to Google left companies pondering their own incremental initiatives and realizing they’d be hard-pressed to get to such successful market disruptions on their own.
Design, for too long treated as an afterthought, was proving to be a powerful differentiator, exciting consumers in markets where it never mattered before.
Put all these forces together and a new marketplace was born: outsourced innovation, the other corporate ladder — outsiders helping companies hoist their innovation to new altitudes, up to the higher
fruit they not only couldn’t reach on their own, but often couldn’t see. Like any selfrespecting movement, innovation outsourcing IBE JUT TJOHVMBS EFmOJOH NPNFOU *U XBT UIF EBZ " ( -BnFZ FBSMZ JO IJT SFNBSLBCMF SVO BT
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A decade of right-sizing and Six Sigma had created an appetite for alternatives to the slow and expensive journey of homegrown R&D.
CEO and ‘innovator in chief’ of P&G, stood at the podium and declared that he wanted half the new ideas his famously insular company would bring to market in the years ahead to come from outside the company. Game on.
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DELIVER OR GO HOME
WHO’S PLAYING
WHO’S PLAYING?
LIKE ANY HOT PARTY WITH AN OPEN INVITATION AND NO DRESS CODE, THE OUTSOURCING OF INNOVATION IS DRAWING AN ECLECTIC CAST OF CHARACTERS.
Does Your Innovation Partner Know How to Dress? Knows precisely what to wear.
Is pretty sure what to wear.
Will put on whatever works that night.
Innovation Specialists
Design Companies
Research Companies
Branding Companies
Management Consultancies
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WHO’S PLAYING
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Pure-play innovation specialist firms (like Fahrenheit 212) are obsessing about nothing else. 1
Design companies are eager to prove their value earlier in the innovation food chain.
1. The pure-play innovation specialist.
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Research companies and concept shops are focusing single-mindedly on insights. 3
Branding companies are trying to lay claim to the line extension.
2. The eager-to-play designer.
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Management consultancies are trying to stretch from merely defining where to play, to how to synthesize tangible solutions. 5
And legions of wide-eyed optimists are leaping into the fray, drawn to innovation’s newfound fashionability, slinging around ideas with little worry about what’s strategically relevant, operationally feasible or financially attractive. 6
All this dynamism is a healthy thing. It is helping to change the altitude of the innovation conversation in many great companies. Ambitions are stretching. And when it goes right, velocity and ROI are improving. While it’s hard to put metrics on the impact (companies getting kudos for their big wins often ask their external partners to stay behind the curtain), all indicators suggest that the change is reaping big dividends and is here to stay.
There is now a big enough experience base for forward-looking assessment of the gaps in the outsourcing models in use today, to define a more robust future.
3. The single-minded insight seeker.
4. The brand-driven prospector.
5. The reaching management consultant.
6. The wide-eyed enthusiasts.
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FAST FORWARD
DELIVER OR GO HOME
FAST FORWARD What lies ahead as innovation outsourcing’s next wave is a new era of accountability.
From Failure to the Future
Understanding why this is necessary and how it will play out starts with understanding the impact of decades of rampant innovation failure, and the ways companies are responding to it, reshaping the way they structure their innovation efforts.
Innovation Initiatives, Avg. Per Firm Accountability, ‘0% Innovation Success, ‘0% Past
Innovation failure has for so long been so common (comfortably north of 90% failure on a project-inception basis), that it has become normalized and oddly acceptable.
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Far too many projects have churned on, quarter to quarter, burning cash and resources in half-pregnant gestation, TVSmOH PO DVSJPTJUZ XJUI OPUIJOH DPODSFUF enough for a chief exec or consumer to say OP UP POMZ UP mOE BGUFS UIF DIFDLT DMFBS that there never was a big opportunity in sight.
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One of the overdue realizations is that many of these dead-end projects were EFmOFE BSPVOE TNBMM PQQPSUVOJUJFT SJHIU out of the gate, but moved forward anyway. Predictably enough, the pendulum is now swinging hard the other way.
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FAST FORWARD
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1. Fewer-bigger: Placing heavier bets on fewer spots is the new mantra of every CFO these days.
‘Fewer-bigger’ is the new mantra on the 1 lips of every CFO these days. What’s taking hold is a desire to replace what had organically become a shotgun 2 approach, spraying scores of small, loosely EFmOFE DBTVBMMZ BJNFE JOOPWBUJPO CFUT 3 with something more akin to a bazooka ‰DPODFOUSBUJOH PSHBOJ[BUJPOBM mSFQPXFS against bigger, more strategically robust, larger scale opportunities. This new orientation comes with big DPOTFRVFODFT mSTU JOTJEF DPNQBOZ IBMMT then for the outside partners they enlist to add spark to their innovation efforts. Internally, the shift toward ‘fewer-bigger’ means lines of accountability will sharpen. In truth, the shotgun approach offered lush insulation. The importance of any one initiative hitting the jackpot was low, and project failures were so abundant that few stood out, leaving accountability thinly spread across the organization. But ‘fewerbigger’ will change that, putting higher expectations and a brighter spotlight on every program.
While companies will continue to wrangle with the tension between the need for greater accountability and the desire to foster a climate that encourages their best innovators to swing for the fences, external innovation partners, who have for the most part skated along with no skin in the game and little pressure to deliver tangible outcomes, will inevitably face rising demands and expectations, and will step up to meet them or face a Darwinian cull.
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3. Bazooka Approach: The bazooka concentrates JUT mSFQPXFS PO POF MBSHF TDBMF UBSHFU
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4. Darwinian Cull: Innovation partners need to face accountability. Failure to do so could lead to extinction.
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DELIVER OR GO HOME
FILLING OUT THE TOOLBOX
FILLING OUT THE TOOLBOX To deliver valuable impact in this fewerbigger world, external partners will need broader, nimbler skill sets, complementing disruptive creativity with vastly sharper TUSBUFHJD PQFSBUJPOBM BOE mOBODJBM DIPQT and a new appreciation of the distance between a clever scribble on a Post-it note 1 and in-market success. They’ll also need new foundational insights about what separates the innovations that work from those that don’t. Foremost among these will be the realization that in UPEBZ T TBUVSBUFE NBSLFUQMBDF EFmOJOH and solving for consumer needs is only half of what success requires—a critical half to be sure, but still just half.
Successful innovation ideas have to solve both the needs of the consumer, and the aggregate needs of the company out to serve her —spanning its strategic imperatives, its operational realities, its risk thresholds, its brands and its ROI requirements. 1. Money
2. Magic
Complete Innovation Solution
History unequivocally shows that a TJOHVMBS mYBUJPO PO UIF DPOTVNFS T OFFET — relegating the needs of the business to secondary status or subsequent work streams —has been a primary contributor to innovation failure rates and poor ROI. So too has been a belief that solving the company’s needs requires any less lateral creative thinking than those of the consumer. Today, the vast majority of would-be external innovation partners work in this unhelpfully one-sided way, which comes with a baked-in tendency to serve up consumer solutions wrapped in layers of unsolved strategic, commercial and 2 operational questions.
1. Precision Tools: In order to complement disruptive creativity, sharp strategic skills are required.
Leaving their client partners to worry about whether those commercial questions can in fact be solved at all, they comfortably dodge real accountability for delivering tangible outcomes.3 2. Step to the Mic: Those presenting more problems than solutions will have to face the crowd.
A two-sided approach to concurrently solving for the needs of the company and the consumer — which in our practice, we call Money & Magic — transforms the likelihood and velocity of success, CFDBVTF JU EFmOFT B DPNQMFUF TPMVUJPO BT the only option. Backed with a skin-in-the-game performance-based compensation NPEFM JU BMJHOT PVS EFmOJUJPO PG TVDDFTT with that of our client partners, creates an obsession with tangible outcomes rather than esoteric intrigue, and makes accountability a here-and-now reality.
3. Dodgeball: A thing to be dodged. Beware of those who comfortably duck accountability.
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ACCOUNTABILITY AT WORK
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ACCOUNTABILITY AT WORK Here are five ways to infuse a healthy new accountability into your engagements with external innovation partners.
1 2 3 4 5 Bury the myth that creativity performs best when coddled, sheltered from criticism and insulated from pressure to QFSGPSN 5IJT WJFX XIJDI XBT mSTU IBUDIFE in the 1940s and is still propagated today CZ UIF CFOFmDJBSJFT PG JUT ADIBSHF CJH promise nothing’ implications, is both unhelpful and untrue. Multiple studies have debunked it, proving not only that performance pressure and critique aren’t destructive to creativity, but that they actually elevate it, increasing the breadth and depth of creative solutions. It takes 1 pressure to turn carbon into diamonds.
Don’t ask less of your innovation partners than your company asks of you. As innovation continues to take on greater urgency in the growth agenda of every enterprise, innovation leaders are facing increased scrutiny, tighter performance metrics and greater oversight in where, when and how they spend their budgets. To not comparably ratchet up the performance metrics you place on external partners and how they get paid doesn’t really make sense.
Don’t bring a unicycle to an off-road race. Not all innovation projects are created equal. If all you’re after is a fresh riff on a well-established value proposition and business model, a dose of lateral thinking and fresh consumer insight may be enough to get you rolling. But bigger ambitions for transformational innovation and step-change growth typically come with bigger, more diverse and more complex strategic, operational and commercial questions that need solving. Dig beneath the surface to interrogate whether a potential partner has the real depth and breadth to work across the whole challenge, rather than just a piece of it. And ask yourself not just whether a potential partner would be helpful, but whether you’d be comfortable holding them accountable.
If your partner won’t bet on you, think twice before you bet on them. In the pursuit of transformational innovation, everyone from the top of the food chain on down is placing bets. A CFO bets a chunk of money. A division head bets a pool of her best and brightest talent. The point person on a project bets their career trajectory. For external partners to skate by with zero risk — guaranteed a full payout regardless of whether they crack the code — is undoubtedly common, but thoroughly at odds with what’s happening across the rest of the food chain. Accountability means shared risk and shared reward. Ask a partner to bet on you, with performance-based compensation. Be leery of anyone who doesn’t insist on it. Only when your partner bets on you will you achieve true alignment of purpose, BOE B CPOB mEF QBSUOFSTIJQ
Don’t ever apologize GPS EFmOJOH TVDDFTT as ideas that are both transformational and feasible, and failure as anything less. The black hole into which accountability and a whole lot of money disappears is the one where external partners are allowed to believe that their value lies in the delivery of clever, disruptive thinking. Your shareholders don’t measure success in interesting afternoons. You can’t either. The sweet spot is strategically relevant ideas that disrupt the marketplace without CSJOHJOH TVDI FQJD mOBODJBM PS PQFSBUJPOBM disruption to the business that they never have a real shot at getting to market. To not make this overtly clear to your partners is to let them off the hook.
Pressure Makes Diamonds Debunking the coddlers of innovation solutions.
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1. For more on this: Jonah Lehrer, “Groupthink,� Annals of Ideas,The New Yorker, January 30, 2012, p.22
Fahrenheit 212 is an innovation consultancy that is engaged to deliver top line growth. To learn more about our transformational approach to innovation, visit Š Fahrenheit 212 LLC. All Rights Reserved 2012 www.fahrenheit-212.com. Contact Geoff@fahrenheit-212.com for more details.