9 Common Innovation Roadblocks and How to Navigate Around Them

Widgets-R-Us, your top competitor, is on the highway to the skyway. They crank out spectacular new products on an annual basis, and each one is eagerly anticipated and warmly embraced by their customer base. Your products are always just a couple of car lengths behind. You produce high quality stuff, but they're always quicker around the corner than you are when it comes to widget features that people adore. What's the problem? Most likely, it's your innovation roadblocks. No, Widgets-R-Us did not call the cops on you. You did it to yourself. But that's okay, because you can get around these roadblocks and back on the road to success.

1. Innovation Isn't Essential to Survival

Survival Guide 101: Always innovate and don't eat plants you don't recognize.

Many companies crank up with an intriguing concept, and then struggle to draft on the aerodynamics of that idea -- for way too long. That isn't going to get you to the finish line. All companies that remain successful revamp their innovation strategy as time goes by and make sure it's filled with fresh fuel regularly. Think like GE, which has essentially re-invented the concept of lighting our homes and businesses over and over for more than 100 years. Never use cruise control -- always keep innovating.

2. Innovation Isn't Necessary in This Industry

Do you work in banking or finance or transportation, where the principles and practices remain constant, decade after decade? That doesn't excuse you from innovation. Successful businesses jump start the industry with new products, business models, and better ways of doing what's already been done before. After all, one bank decided to jump the curb and begin offering online services, which ushered in the era of online banking and e-commerce. Be the first car off the line, and you too can set the pace for a stalled industry.

3. All Innovation is Radical & Disruptive

Not all innovation comes from a radical idea. Some come
in softly and quietly, but a lot of small improvements can work
together to make industry-changing differences.

That doesn't mean that your innovation strategy has to be limited to radical change that disrupts and revolutionizes your industry. Each innovation that comes along to change the future is supplemented by numerous small tweaks that hone the new products and services into finely-tuned machines. Don't overlook or underplay small ideas that together can deliver huge improvements.

4. Only the Innovation Team or R&D is Responsible for Innovation

Innovation needs to be a company-wide thing. Don't build a culture that assumes the innovation is confined to R&D or a small set of folks dubbed the "innovation team". There's room for everybody on this pit crew! Encourage and reward ideas, no matter where they come from. If you fail to do this, someone in your ranks will come up with a revolutionary concept and drag race it right to one of your competitors.

5. We Will Always Solve Today's Problems by Remembering How We Solved Yesterday's Problems

Learning from past wins and losses is one thing. Continually, perpetually regurgitating the same tired concepts and innovation strategies is another. Don't get stuck in neutral gear, trying to bleed more speed out of a gas can that's run dry. Freshen things up! The only time your celebration of a win should stop is when it's time to roll up your shirt sleeves and enter a new race.

6. We Can Huddle Into a Tight Little Innovation Group and Ignore the Outside Word

A tightly-knit group is great! But excluding the
outside world leads to stifled innovation quickly.

Is your innovation team cliquish? Innovation doesn't happen in a vacuum. Your innovation folks should be out and about -- both within the company, around the industry, and in the outside world. The more exposure they get to new ideas, concepts, and disciplines, the more traction they will get when it's time to develop new ideas that can be turned into brilliant innovations. Invest in new training programs. Offer tours of your factories and facilities. Send your workers to conferences and trade shows. It's a big world, full of sparks that can become infernos of innovation.

7. Everyone New Who Comes in Has to Embrace Our Way of Thinking

Ah, the "our way or the highway" mindset. Nothing stalls innovation more quickly or more completely. Open your doors to new hires that have a different way of viewing the world. Encourage independent thought and original ways of looking at things. Be open to people who drive on the wrong side of the road sometimes. Such is the oil that keeps the wheels and gears of innovation turning smoothly.

8. Risk is Great! But Only if It Pays Off

Many companies openly reward those who take risks, but only if those risks pay off. Newsflash: more ideas crash and burn than sprout wings and fly. If workers get the idea that their risk-taking could end up with ridicule, punishment, or ungratefulness, they will never share the ideas they come up with that could revolutionize your business and the world. Always be ready with an encouraging word, even when ideas crash into the wall.

9. If Someone Wins, Someone Else Has to Lose

Is there an unspoken but deeply held belief that if one idea is given the green light that another is sent to the junkyard? This is a toxic system to innovation. Foster an environment in which wins and losses are shared, and workers don't feel like they are in competition with one another. There's room for lots of ideas, lots of idea generators, and there are plenty of trophies to go around, even when a risk is taken but doesn't produce results.

Perhaps the best way to remove road blocks to your innovation strategy is to empower your workers with a solid innovation tool that helps them identify problems, overcome obstacles, track successes, and gather the important takeaways from failures. HYPE Innovation has the product to do all this, and more. Contact us to learn more today.