| Hiring to Lead Innovation |
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| Written by James A Gardner |
| Tuesday, 16 March 2010 12:44 |
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A key question to be resolved at the start of an innovation effort is who to hire to lead. This is an especially important decision, because whether you've determined to have a central innovation team or a distributed one that builds an innovation culture, everything that happens will be dependent on what mentality the leader brings to the table. One possibility is to hire an entrepreneur. Such individuals have usually proved they are able to make small ventures successful. They know how to run an enterprise on a shoestring and are able to match limited resources to big problems. Entrepreneurs have usually proved they can take an idea and turn it into something valuable. On the other hand, is it a better choice to get someone who has experience managing portfolios of activity? Such an individual knows how to make decisions to start things, but also can shut them down. They may not have a great deal of project management experience, but they certainly know how to optimise overall returns. Generally, given the choice, most people would hire the former. Its an easy choice to make: select someone who you know will at least make a few things they concentrate on succeed. Regrettably, the obvious choice is not always the best one. Entrepreneurial innovation leaders will always be highly motivated to make a few pet projects successful. That is how they've made a name for themselves in the first place, generally. They've taken a good idea, and through personal heroics, made it into something worthwhile. Usually, their whole careers have been made on a few lucky breaks. Individual heroics are one thing, but the fact of the matter is most innovation projects fail for one reason or other. This happens despite the amount of effort applied. Entrepreneurs accept this intuitively, so they cancel a projects which don't seem to be progressing well. They live in the hope that their next project will be a hit. For innovation teams in larger organisations, however, this is a very bad strategy. Innovation leaders usually last about 18 months before their stakeholders get sick of waiting for results. Doing things in the sequential order of the entrepreneur means that that time runs out way before there are decent result. The implication is that hiring an investor is usually sensible. Investors have an intuitive understanding of the fact that the real name of the game in innovation is avoiding concentrations of risk to get to a predictable return. Usually, that means a light touch on a large number of simultaneous innovations, rather than a deep concentration on a few. About the Author: Is this the time you start an innovation program and are mulling over your hiring decisions? James Gardner's free online resource has detailed advice on how to hire an innovation leader. |