A vision of Innovation from the day to day perspective

1. Innovation: myth, game... or necessity?
I am eating with a friend of mine and Control Management Director of a big
Spanish industrial company. As she sits in front of me, she starts complaining:
Eva, I find great my company willingness to encourage us to develop ideas that
after all will go to a data base… but I actually don’t know what will happen
after that… And what is more, I don’t have time to implement them! I am too
busy! There is absolutely no point in doing that!
Coffee break while on an innovation event; I am chatting with the executive of
a big Spanish company. He proudly relates me the big volumes of generated
ideas they have achieved, as well as the percentage of ideas converted into
prototypes or projects. Ingenuously. I am wondering about the impact that has
on the business, when he recognize with no blush that they do not measure it.
I am having breakfast with an old consultancy colleague. While we are
enthusiastically talking, he admits to me the following: we are not able to apply
innovation in our customer tech projects. The project leaders acknowledge that
they have received all sorts of training and messages, but they do not know
where to start.
It is late at night; the kids let me my beloved lonely time before going to bed
that I normally use to check the big volumes of information that the Net sends
us continuously: I open McKinsey… and I see innovation, BCG… innovation,
economic press… innovation, Twitter… Innovation, LinkedIn… Innovation. What
is happening! For a moment, I think a malicious virus has infected my Mac and I
close it swiftly, as if doing that could save me!
I open it again; it was not a virus. It is the trending topic in the current business
management world. However, my personal and colleagues' experience in the
direction boards of different companies suggests the opposite. Again I think,
what is happening?
Today is one of those long nights in which I will stay up all night, and not
because I'm out with my friends.
We are bombed with loads of examples from innovative companies. Actually,
the examples are always the same ones: Apple, Google, Facebook, Einstein…
Those are companies and figures that, in fact, are part of the innovation myth.
stories of success, in which from lonely entrepreneurs become business giants,
by acting radically different, and reinventing industries and organizations.
People which intellectual and creative level have triggered quantitative leaps
for the humankind.
I am a professional woman who always tries to be creative and disruptive. And
so was I in the companies where I have worked for. For this reason, when I read
those stories, when I receive tweets with some quotes or stories of the above
mentioned companies, I open my eyes naively, as I cannot hide a feeling

2. between envy and admiration. However, compared with my personal
experience, I see those stories really as far from my own and my customers
reality as I can see Rafael Nadal's achievements. And, by the way, I mention
him because he is one of my heroes.
I switch to another topic and I read some interesting things about how to
innovate. And then, I precisely remember the new meeting areas or lounges in
my customer’s modern buildings as well as the new working environment in
Microsoft or Google. I read about conceding the necessary freedom to
employees to foster their creativity, and about those sessions where having fun
and freedom to create comes first. I also read about the importance of an
inspiring atmosphere, about colours, about multidisciplinary teams and about
games as creativity inductors… ¿Have I also read something about smells? No, I
do not think so. I think I am starting to rant.
Therefore, I imagine the innovative process as something funny, ludic, playful.
And I’m just with the same feelings experienced before: envy (I want to work in
colourful offices!), admiration (those leaders seem so cool!) and, honestly a little
of incredulity (¿Does that truly exist?). In fact, as well as trying to be creative
and disruptive, I am very realistic. I can do no more than remembering my
experience with the “real innovation”. The daily based one. The one that the
market has obliged be to apply if I wanted to survive in my companies.
Two years ago, I attended a creativity workshop of a known innovation
consultancy firm. And what I remember the most is that no matter the number
of ideas we put on the table, the coach always demanded us to put some
more. He always had something to correct, and after all, he was always asking
us for more. I ended up exhausted! And I was not even implementing them!

3. In my consultancy projects, when we face a tough challenge to submit a
differential offer to our customers I always require my team to give not 100%,
but 200% of their mental capacity. Actually, we work on exhausting sessions,
and they can attest to this. We do not have colours, the meeting room smells
our sweat and we do not have as much time as we loved. We need to have
ideas, disruptive ideas, and we have to have them now. I cannot imagine
myself explaining to my customer that we will submit the offer in two months
because we were not creative that day. The business pressure do not let us
having time to take a breath and look for the “appropriate” environments to
innovate. The business pressure does not let us to compose teams just formed
by motivated people. Everybody, with no distinction, has to create. No excuses.
Exhausted, but we do it.
In my experience with members of the executive committee in the companies I
have worked for, we have always tried to break the market, looking for
differentiation. And we have tried it numerous times, and we have failed doing
so, and we have tried it all over again by other means, and we have tried to be
creatives, and we have failed again… Sometimes, we failed because we were
not sufficiently creative. Sometimes it was because of our limitations, and
sometimes because of our management. But the company should grow up
and after many attempts, we finally found a small channel to innovate. It was
an exhausting process. But we did it.
As a consultant, many years ago I took part in some projects aimed at industrial
installations, where, altogether with customers, we should find the way to
optimize the processes and reduce times. I can ensure you that factory facilities
is as similar to Google’s as I am to Scarlett Johansson. But we did innovate. And
well we did! If we succeeded in doing so, partly was because the future of the
factory was on that, and all employees knew it; and in my case, there was the
partner’s evaluation and my promotion.
We did not innovate to copy Steve Jobs, or because we thought it was cool to
sit on colourful chairs. We innovate because there was not another chance; it
was our obligation.
But we innovated with more effort than necessary and less effectiveness than
required.
Honestly, I truly believe that in the desire of consultants and gurus to emphasize
the need for innovation (with which I agree), we are forgetting about
explaining the reality of innovation: innovation is hard, innovation requires
sacrifice, and innovation requires effort. Sometimes we fail, others we get
discouraged and we do not know how to do it many times. But we must do it,
we must learn to do it, it is our obligation as professionals.

4. And when we consider, as responsible professionals, to innovate and in our
mental maps we find Steve Jobs, or Google, or something funny, we consider it
as far from our capacities, that we renounce or lose faith in what they tell us.
In short: the messages we receive about the innovation’s promotion are in fact
disincentives to innovate! (You cannot deny it, this is really disruptive!)
It is really late at night now. My consultant spirit asks me to leave a sort of
methodological recommendations on how to strengthen innovation in the
Spanish industrial fabric. But actually, I am rather passionate. So, instead of
magic consultant pills, I will provide some small prayers for innovation. After all it
is late at night…
To my consultant colleagues, gurus and managers, as an innovation fan, I beg
you to…
• Illustrate us with your results and specific examples, maybe simple but
real, related to people like us! Explain us what you got, how you succeed
and in which points you failed. Please, Steave Jobs is not with us
anymore.
• Help us in our daily innovation initiatives; being close to us, giving us what
we need, cheering us up. We have already forgotten the training lessons
we got two months ago, we neither see signs nor read them, and the
committes were everything we do is checked are too far from us.
• Give us an area to create; but we do not need colourful chairs or glass
ceilings, we do not even need sweeties and lollipops. Give us some time,
give us capacities, resources and courage. Give us examples, and
above all, let us innovate.

5. • Guide our innovation effort. Tell us what are we looking for, tell us what
we need to achieve, tell us what the finish line is. Do not let us to get lost
in our effort and sterile ways that exhaust us with no prize. And if we get
lost, please help and guide us in the following challenge.
• Provide us with the guides, give us the methods, define us the steps.
Make easier our path. Give us the innovation framework in which we
have to move on. But please, one by us and for us; one in which all of us
believe.
• Imply us in the innovation processes; make us feel important for the
company’s future, but when we provide the company with all our
(limited) knowledge and our incipient creative capacity, do not fade
away.
• Have an action plan for “the after”, accompany the ideas and
innovation projects, be involved with the implementation of innovative
projects. The ideas, as well as training or creativity sessions are not worth
it (and do not motive us either) if there is not a later implementation.
We do not ask for fun, we do not ask to be worldwide stars. We just want that
what we do can be useful, and what we do can be done, as much as possible,
with less effort.
To ones that have read until here, thank you. I am sorry not to have exhibited a
systematic and methodical analysis. As you can see, this has not been based
on data or surveys to senior management of companies in Forbes. This is my
real experience with my customers, my teams and colleagues from my
direction committee. This is my particular view of reality.
Eva Diaz
Socia NmC/Inducsoft
eva.diazonoro@gmail.com
@eva_diazo