Principled Innovation LLC

Why do we need to justify innovation?

February 15th, 2008

Innovation blogging colleague Jeffrey Phillips put up a great post a few days ago in which he raises a question for leaders in the corporate sector that I’ve also posed to leaders in the association community: why do we need to justify innovation? Here is a central point from the post:

…why do we need to justify innovation at all? No one would ever question the relative value of a purchasing team and process and software, or a sales team. These are functions and people we need to run a business. We may argue about the size or expense of those teams, but rarely do we attempt to justify their existence. So, why do we need to justify the existence of an innovation capability? If the one key competitive advantage you have left is in creating new products and services faster and more effectively than your competition, do you need to justify the infrastructure to do that? Or is it only the initiatives that stand to create greater revenue and margins that must be justified, not the transactional, cost cutting items? Recognize that all of this is a bit tongue in cheek, but really - if organic growth and innovation is so important, why do we demand such rigorous attempts to justify it while birthing it?

Jeffrey is right on point. Associations typically don’t have purchasing or sales teams, but they do have other functions that are deemed necessary to creating value, generating revenue and to the proper operation of organizational activities more broadly. As Jeffrey suggests, there may be debates about the proper size and cost of those departments or teams, but the need for them is generally accepted as axiomatic. Moreover, even though we complain loudly about the bureaucratic and, sometimes, cost-ineffective nature of traditional volunteer-led committees, task forces and other structures, they still exist in some form within all associations. Despite the clear frustration they create, apparently, we still believe they serve some meaningful purpose.

So given these realities, why do we need to justify the pursuit of innovation in associations? Part of the reason is also found in Jeffrey’s post, i.e., are we talking about creating an innovation project or building an innovation capability? While it may be possible to find support for a single limited innovation project, it is a much greater (often insurmountable) challenge to create a sustainable capacity for innovation, even though the latter is far more desirable. We know that dysfunctional governing systems are a major part of the problem here, and so is one of the by-products of governing failure: Really Ordinary Thinking (ROT). For all of our supposed focus on ROI in making intelligent business decisions, what’s really appears to be missing in our organizations is the imagination necessary to recognize the long-term value of building a sustainable infrastructure for continuous innovation.

So if you’re concerned that your association’s ability to be generative in today’s marketplace is decaying from the inside, I urge you to focus your attention on destroying the ROT that is, without question, among the primary drivers of unabated failure in all organizations.

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