Debating the role of innovation

Providing innovative products and services is top priority for over 80% of marketing directors in the technology sector. Although a study from Forrester (Being Innovative Means Beyond The Hype) indicates that the way innovation is managed by these companies is usually not process driven, and do not support innovation efforts with proper management.

The definition of innovation according Chris andrew (author of the article) is:

Innovation is a combination of both invention and commercialisation.

This definition insists on the fact that to be innovative, an invention needs to have commercial value.


Companies such as Google or 3M take innovation very seriously. Members of engineering development teams at Google for instance are actively encouraged to allocate and spend 20% of their work time (one day per week) on projects that interest them.

I think that this model can work for for SMEs as well (interesting discussion here), and is worth considering. For a web development/design company, this can include: working on improving production processes, developing plug-ins for open source software or work on open source projects, developing new services, setting up micro websites or online social communities, etc...

There are many challenges to address...

- ensure that staff don't become too "passionate" about this side projects, and end up spending more than 20% of their time on them
- try to fit in these projects into short term strategies, whereas they should on the contrary contribute and be in line with comapny's long term strategy
- running the scheme for a couple of weeks and then forget about it as soon as new product/services deliveries are due.
- etc..

... However I would find it difficult to encourage big corporations improving the way they manage innovation if I could not demonstrate that it can have a very positive impact on my own company's bottom line.