5.7 How do we innovate?

Of all the possible ways an innovation could occur it is sometimes hard to imagine it happening any other way. Take, for example, the invention of powered flight: one day in 1903, two brothers – the Wright brothers – became the first humans to fly an aircraft under power. How could it not have been the Wright brothers? Unless your interests lie in the history of the aeroplane it may be hard to remember the names of anyone else that was trying. Was anyone else even trying or were they alone in this idea?

The story of powered flight is as a perfect illustration of the vagaries of the innovation process. Samuel Pierpont Langley was a pioneer and visionary in the development of aircraft. In another timeline he could have become the first to develop a powered aircraft, but in our world – as we know – he wasn’t. And yet, it’s hard to see why. Langley was highly educated, a successful astronomer and physicist, and is credited with multiple inventions through his career. He began his experimentations with aircraft in 1887. In 1896 he managed to launch an 11kg model aircraft that achieved a flight distance record (for the time) of 1,000m. He was awarded grants of $50,000 from the US War Department and $20,000 from the Smithsonian to develop a full scale model of his aircraft. He assembled a team of experts to participate on the development of his plane. He tested his vehicle in the relative safety of the calm air of the Potomac river. And he had a powerful (for the time) engine developed. And in 1902 the Wright brothers beat him. Langley would go on to give up in 1903 after two crashes. In fact, had he not given up and been able to successfully fly, it would most likely still have put the pilot in extreme danger, unlike the Wright Brothers aeroplane.

By contrast, a young Wilbur Wright was struck in the face with a hockey stick in 1885 leaving him housebound for many years. His brother Orville dropped out of high school in his junior year to found a printing press. In 1892 they opened a bicycle repair and sales shop. In 1896 they began manufacturing their own pedal bikes. Self-funding from this venture would enable their aeronautics work. And in 1899 the Brothers began testing their designs, which yielded fruit in 1902.

The well-funded, well educated, well connected team of experts was beaten by the self-funded, self-taught pair of brothers. Why?

First, let’s establish something important: the Wright Brothers did not work in isolation. No, they didn’t steal their design from anyone else, but they did immerse themselves in the work of others and learn from it. Attractive as the idea of the lone inventor creating magic from nothing is, innovation is rarely done in isolation. In fact, the Wright Brothers were part of a community of people attempting to solve this problem. They saw the crashes, injuries, failures and problems of others and they learned from them. They learned from them with their own failures and tests. In essence, they learned by doing. They built models. They built gliders before they mounted engines. They improved stability and control before they launched. They tested different wings in a wind tunnel in their shop. They started small, validated with data and built bigger. They learned how to fly a plane at the same time as they learned how to make a plane that could fly.

But the story doesn’t end there. What might have happened next in another world is that the Wright Brothers, through technical prowess and having a head start with a working prototype, went on to dominate the field of aviation. This didn’t happen, though. The Wright Brothers, fearful that their work may be stolen by someone else, refused to even offer a demonstration without a signed contract. They backed away from that very community they’d been part of. They were even unwilling to show photos of their Flyer.

Meanwhile, the establishment that had invested in Langley rejected the idea that two bicycle sellers from Ohio could have achieved what he hadn’t. For years the Smithsonian refused to acknowledge the Wright Brothers achievement and in 1914 when a modified version of Langley’s aeroplane was finally successfully piloted the Smithsonian chose to display that vehicle in their museum with the description “the first man-carrying aeroplane in the history of the world capable of sustained free flight.” Though the Wright Brothers did develop their Flyer further, their focus shifted to establishing and protecting their patent. In 1909 the Wright Company was founded. It is said that they believed further innovations on their design would hurt the company's efforts to obtain royalties from competing manufacturers or patent infringers. In 1916 the Wright Company merged with a competitor, soon becoming one among many with little evidence of the monumental foundations it had established for its entire industry.

Innovation is one of those funny things like strategy: everyone wants to be innovative, much as everyone wants to be strategic, but not everyone needs to be. And innovation, much like strategy, is a misunderstood concept. Being innovative means ‘not doing it the way everyone else does’. Innovation means straying outside the guidelines of process, thinking or deliverables to do something different. Would that be something you want everyone one in your marketing team to do? It would be chaos. A complete lack of consistency, standardisation or repeatability. It would be impossible to have most of that innovation be sustained because of a lack of foundations to build on. Innovation is not just about being first. Fans of Google’s Android ecosystem (or even Windows Phone or Palm OS) like to laugh when Apple ‘invents’ something years after they have been using that same technology. And yet Apple enjoys unrivalled market leadership and a strong perception of innovation. Innovation is about landing the change as well as making it.

Structuring Marketing teams for innovation

Innovation is directly correlated to risk. You try something with the intent to see what happens. If it doesn’t work as you planned, you try something else. If it does work you can decide whether to keep doing it, to build on it with other things that work or to ignore it and move on. And finally you get something special.

Innovation comes in two forms: iterative and transformative

Iterative innovation applies new thinking to existing models to improve them further. Iterative innovation makes you the best in your industry. Transformative innovation creates new industries. It reimagines and forces entirely new approaches. Sometimes these new approaches replace the old way, other times they are additive and work alongside each other with different focuses. Know which one you’re trying to do.

Innovation is about execution as well as invention

To inventors the idea is the key, and they may be disappointed at the credit and profits that others generate from their good idea. Innovators can forget or overlook how much effort must to go into turning an idea or invention into a workable, affordable output that actually delivers benefits to people. As Elon Musk said while scaling production of the Telsa Model 3, “It's relatively easy to make a prototype but extremely difficult to mass manufacture a vehicle reliably at scale… For cars it's maybe 100 times harder to design the manufacturing system than the car itself.” In the history of innovation, it is the people who find ways to drive down costs and simplify a product who make the biggest difference. Innovation is fragile. It can be crushed so easily that it is barely noticed and rarely missed. Big companies particularly are bad at innovating because they fail to establish the right culture or frameworks for enabling and rewarding innovators. Some of the biggest barriers to innovation are a desire for the artificial safety of current-state, self-interest and a paranoia among the powerful of losing control.

Innovation is recombining existing ideas

Pure innovation does not exist. Ideas are always built on existing technologies, understanding or capabilities. This should in no way detract from the ability of someone to see what others haven’t and come up with a new idea from it. It took until 1972 for someone to look at holidaymakers and realise all the luggage they were carrying would be a lot easier to transport if it just had wheels on. Bernard Sadow did, though, and patented ‘Rolling Luggage.’ Can you imagine how many people must have struggled with heavy, unwheeled luggage before one person came up with the idea of putting wheels on them? Seeing what everyone else has seen and making a better version is arguably more impressive than coming up with an idea from scratch that no one else has thought of.

Innovation is about breaking the rules

Design and build the most perfect organisation, optimise it for complete efficiency, remove any deviations from the plan and maximise performance and you will have an organisation that lacks any innovation. Innovation requires freedom from rules and constraints to allow people to explore new ideas, to push boundaries and to think outside the box. Innovation cannot always be directed or constrained and needs space to grow. It needs space to fail, fail again and fail some more before success changes the world. As Thomas Edison said, “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”