How Not to Innovate

Timberland has an R&D unit for shoes called "Invention Factory." At the beginning, the Invention Factory had a real genius for shoe design, but they operated very much in isolation. They came up with a genius invention called "travel gear" that won an innovation idea award from a business magazine. Travel gear was an idea that came from observing how many shoes people were carrying in airports and how they wore all kinds of shoes to get on an airplane just so they had the right pairs with them. So the Timberland Invention Factory decided to make a modular shoe that you could change the heel or the outer covering and have a running shoe, a hiking shoe, a rain shoe, and a business shoe all in one. Cool idea.

Then it was finally handed over to the regular men's shoe division to figure out how to sell it. First of all, they were selling three pairs of shoes in one, so they had to charge three times the price or else they would eat into their existing business. The wholesalers thought it was really weird and didn't understand it at all or how to explain it to retail stores. Those people had no connection with developing this and the whole thing was killed. So that was the isolation model.

What's a better model?

Innovation can certainly be managed, but it can't be managed the same way as something that's already established. You don't manage innovation by expecting to have a full-blown plan at the beginning. You don't manage it by having deadlines that refer to your annual corporate planning calendar. You don't do it by expecting it to have a high financial return immediately. You don't do it by applying rules that fit big businesses and applying it to a small startup inside the company.

The best model looks something like what the tech world calls "rapid prototyping." I call it strategy as improvisational theater. You begin with a concept, the team goes to work, creates something, gets feedback from the audience or users, and modifies it. Your management system has to have tolerance for improvisation because you really don't know at the beginning exactly what this product or service will look like. It's like improv -- you've got a theme, very highly skilled actors who are flexible and they take their cues from the audience.

To get ideas in the first place, it's helpful to have a great deal of contact with potential users and to be looking around the world to see what's missing and what the needs are. But when you're trying to form a new and fragile idea and don't have prototypes, it can be helpful for the team to focus. Leaders should give the team space. Don't make them report at a lot of meetings. Don't hold them to the same deadlines as the rest of the company. Give them a little freedom to develop the idea, but stay connected. As the idea is ready to emerge, the more collaboration with various units the better.

What sort of person should not be put in charge of innovation?

Somebody who knows one narrow field and that's all they know. The leaders of innovation don't have to be the smartest people in the world; they have to know a smart idea when they see it.