Creating a Culture of Innovation

Innovation here is higher-risk product discovery - the design of new mechanisms to extract value with low assurance that things will actually work well. The emphasis here is that managing innovation is explicitly about managing risk - methodically considering and communicating risk to stakeholders, "failing gracefully and fast". Egger from SAP references assessing budding products in terms of "desirability, feasibility, viability", which is a design thinking thing [0]. A win an innovation program is when you don't over commit to risk. You put some resources into a program, at some phase assess risk per some rubric, and go on the the next stage or not.

He makes the point that in spite of having an innovation function, you want an innovation culture: "But what you really want to do is not have an innovation team. You just want to have people who are focused on willing difficult projects into existence, and de-risking those projects. And so in an ideal world, what a company, personally, what I believe it should strive towards is help the bigger organization to get good at product discovery themselves, and not lead innovation or be the “innovation office”, but rather then be the steward who helps to incorporate new methodologies and help them to get better at de-risking. "

[0] https://designthinking.ideo.com/

The irony of having someone from SAP talking about creating a innovative culture

Whenever I read or listen to such interviews I want to hear what the people working in these organizations are thinking. Usually there is a huge mismatch between reality and what these managers are presenting.

I found the title of the speaker sort of ironic. Doesn't bode well for someone trying to create a culture of innovation.

"Head of Innovation Office and Strategic Projects at SAP Business Process Intelligence"

Whenever someone says "innovation", I hear "change for change's sake". There has to be a reason why they don't call it "improvement", "adaptation", or anything else with actual meaning.

I'm tired of innovation worship. Novelty is not the solution to all problems. In fact, most new ideas are terrible and a big distraction, especially new ideas that are sold primarily on their novelty.

We should care more about adaptability, about understanding and productively responding to our conditions. Sometimes the best response is to stay the course or reuse an old solution.

Maybe we could organize a discussion panel with genuinely interested SAP leaders?

Something like... "what SAP sees as innovative vs. the products we have to use today"

and try to find some middle ground?