"Bridging the Innovation Gap" - Summary

Innovation is crucial for the success of any business. However, it's often observed that the outcomes of systematic innovation efforts within companies are minimal. This is because innovation is heavily reliant on individual people rather than established processes. This indicates that there are still key aspects of innovation that are not fully understood.

The main question here is how to innovate systematically. To find an answer, we need to first understand why innovation efforts typically fail. The idea is that if we can pinpoint the reasons for failure, we can also identify the prerequisites for success.

The traditional model of innovation, known as the innovation funnel, consists of four stages: generating ideas, evaluating and selecting these ideas, developing them, and finally introducing them to the market. However, an analysis of this model reveals two stages where projects are often cancelled: 1) after the ideas have been selected for development, and 2) after they have been introduced to the market. The first stage, referred to as the "innovation gap", is not well-known because project cancellations at this stage are not visible externally. While the second stage is well-documented in literature, the innovation gap is not.

The innovation gap occurs between the early research stages (generating ideas and evaluating/selecting them) and the implementation stages (developing the ideas and introducing them to the market). This gap is a result of fundamental communication difficulties between the innovative units (explorers) who have an NT-dominated culture, and the rest of the company that has an SJ-dominated culture. SJs are ideal for managing operations, while NTs are best suited for exploring new fields. Both cultures are necessary, but they often clash. Misunderstandings at their interface systematically lead to innovation failures.

If this situation is not addressed, the stronger SJ culture will dominate, causing the NTs to leave. This reduces the company's innovation capability, making it dependent on a few key individuals who can bridge the two cultures. This scenario aligns with the typical innovation situation in most companies. Therefore, it can be concluded that the conventional innovation process is incomplete, which explains the failure of systematic innovation. The innovation gap between the early research stages and the implementation stages is an issue that has not been investigated before.

Moreover, well-managed companies usually hire SJs for operations and NTs for exploration. However, having two corporate cultures contradicts management principles. The resulting cultural conflict leads to SJ domination, which in turn reduces the company's innovation capability. Therefore, conventional management practices can actually hinder innovation.

In conclusion, innovation is not fully understood, there is an unknown innovation gap between the early research stages and the implementation stages due to cultural conflicts, and conventional management practices can prevent innovation. To enhance innovation, both the innovation gap and the cultural conflicts need to be addressed.