Introduction: In the dynamic landscape of modern business, creativity and innovation stand as the pillars of success. According to Peter Drucker, innovation transcends technical boundaries, embedding itself deeply within economic and social realms. It is a transformative force that redefines consumer behavior, production processes, and societal norms. This article delves into the critical role of innovation in business, exploring its impact, strategies for fostering it, and the vital importance of tolerating failure as a part of the innovation journey.
Creativity is the product of innovation. In the words of Peter Drucker, “Innovation is not a technical term. It is economic and social term. Its creation is not science or technology, but a change in the economic or social environment, a change in the behaviour of people as consumers, or producers, as citizens, as students or as teachers and so on. Innovation creates new wealth or new potential of action rather than new knowledge.” This means the bulk of innovative efforts will have to come from the place that controls the human resources, that is, from the existing large aggregation of trained and knowledgeable people.
The business enterprise, its structure and organisation, the way in which it integrates knowledge into work, and work into performance, and the way in which it integrates enterprise with society and government, are also areas of major innovative need and innovative opportunity. “Innovation organisation first know what ‘innovation’ means. The know that it is not something that takes place within an organisation, but a change outside. The measure of innovation is the fact on the environment. Innovation in a business enterprise, therefore, always be market focussed. Innovation that a product focussed is likely to produce ‘miracles of technology’ but disappointing rewards.”
Innovative strategy, therefore, should aim at creating new business rather than new product within the already established line. It aims at creating new performance capacity rather than improvement. It aims at creating new concept of what is value rather than satisfying the existing value expectation a little better. The aim of innovating efforts is to make a significant difference. What is significantly different is not a technical decision. It is not the quality of science that makes the difference. It is not how expensive undertaking it is or how hard it is to bring it about. The significant difference lies in the impact on the environment. Innovation is, therefore, attitude and practices. It is, above all, management’s attitudes and practices.
How to overcome stagnation? The best leaders are apt to be found among those executives who have a strong component of unorthodoxy in their character. Instead of resisting innovation, they symbolise it. George Bernard Shaw said, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” Michael Barch, responding to a Fortune article about U.S. shoes wrote, “My father’s real gift and value to U. S. shoes is not in ‘properly segmenting the market’, rather he has created a beautiful corporate culture which rewards risk taking, which supports rather than punishes those who have a bad year or two, which allows ideas to percolate upwards.”
Is it tough to tolerate failures? The art of ‘purposeful impatience’ has been practiced by some of the most renowned “tough bosses” – Walter Wriston of former Citicorp Chairman; Jack Welch at G. E.; Andy Pearson, former Pepsico President; Ed Finkelstein at Mac’s. They were the most vociferous advocates of ‘failure- as normal’, even ‘failure is to be rewarded.’ So, how come they are so tough? They reserve unlimited contempt for those who have tolerated inaction. To fail, learn and try again quickly is seen as normal. To sit and wait for ‘all the data’ to come is unconscionable. To utter ‘I would have gotten it done…but …’ is contemptible. Each believes that you get paid to make things happen, regardless of charts and boxes or the rules and policies they themselves may have written.
In the ultimate analysis, creativity is not the crux of the problem. What is lacking is the willingness to look beyond product to ideas. Service and process are only the vehicles through which an idea becomes effective and for the future, the specific future products and processes can usually not even imagined.
“But tomorrow always arrives. It is always different. Even the mightiest company be in trouble, if it has not worked on future. It will have lost distinction and leadership- all that will remain is a big company overhead. It will neither control nor understand what is happening. Not having dared to take the risk of making the new happen, it perforce took the much greater risk of being surprised by what did happen and this is the risk the even the largest and richest company cannot afford and that even the smallest business need to run.” It is the willingness to tackle purposefully the responsibility of the executive for making the future happen that distinguishes the business from the more competent one, and the business builder from executive suit custodian.
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