Innovation in a down turn
I have been thinking about this topic recently. Innovation is required all the time in this highly dynamic market. After all, the market recently lost a trillion dollars in a matter of minutes. So what’s really important to organisations in down times? Well, i think everyone would have a different argument on this but let me give you mine.
Innovation is important in any period and to make innovation work, the culture of the organisation must embrace innovation. To get to this point a varying degree of investment has to be made make this happen. So in order for the board to go hard on innovation would require a cost benefit analysis. However, the returns on innovation cannot be calculated. You do not know what ideas people might have nor the dollar amount you will receive from this investment. So an investment in innovation is going to be gamble from the dollars and cents perspective because you do not know if 1) employees will contribute, 2) How good are the contributions.
In an event of a down turn, money is the most important and there is a limited supply of it. So if there is a decrease supply of money, would anyone invest on innovation unless they are sure that this investment would be a good one? I guess there will be but its gonna be lesser than when the economy is doing well.
Having said all these, if an individual employee can innovate and contribute without all these initiatives from the organisation and deliver savings, higher revenue or profits for the organisation, it will reflect well no matter if in good or bad times. Employees are on the ground and they can see certain parts of the business much clearer than the C-level folks. They should have a voice in some of the decision making within the organisation. After all, the wisdom of crowds is a powerful tool.
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