The Innovation Race

How to Change a Culture to Change the Game

Andrew Grant, Gaia Grant

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780730328995
• eBook ISBN: 9780730329015
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

If innovation is a race: Who wins? Who loses? Who gets eliminated? – and how is it possible to stay ahead of the game?

The Innovation Race takes readers on a lively global adventure to explore the current state of innovation. Along the way best-selling authors Andrew and Gaia Grant search for clues on how to stay ahead in the race and design a more sustainable future. Asking the critical questions - Why do we innovate? Are we at risk of innovating for the sake of innovation? What could we be doing better? - the Grants reflect on whether, if in the race to come up with 'the next big thing, ' we may be losing the purpose behind the process. They then outline how to navigate the key paradoxical challenges that can either frustrate or fuel innovation to change the game. By taking the latest academic research and presenting it in an accessible way, the Grants present a compelling case for forging a new path for the future.

The Innovation Race provides concrete strategies to support purpose-driven sustainable innovation through deep cultural transformation. A unique profiling tool reveals current organisation positioning along with potential opportunities and challenges. A practical culture change model then provides clear direction for proactive change. With economists estimating that up to 80 per cent of growth comes from new ideas and innovations, this thought-provoking book provides the strategies and tools to learn how to create an innovation culture for long term success.

• Identify your own sweet spot for innovative thinking
• Learn the strategies to transform your organisation
• Engage and motivate employees toward innovative action
• Excel in implementing a deep cultural shift

The Innovation Race will make you reassess what you assumed you knew about innovation, help boost the innovation process to new levels and bring your organisation to the forefront.

PART I
PREPARATION FOR THE GLOBAL REALITY RACE

Destination: Australia

In Part I you will be introduced to the key principle of transformational innovation — innovation that is purpose-driven, sustainable and situational, and based on real needs.

Key challenges addressed:

• How to prepare for the purpose-driven innovation process (chapter 1).
• How to learn to see issues from multiple perspectives (chapter 2).
• How to develop a deep understanding of real innovation needs through authentic empathy (chapter 3).
• How to balance the paradoxes of purpose at each stage of the innovation journey (chapter 4).

1
THE AMAZING INNOVATION RACE
Who wins, who loses, who gets eliminated — and why we need to change the game

Welcome to the global reality race. In this chapter we start the adventure by questioning the typical assumptions about innovation and proposing the need for a new paradigm that will propel us forward into the future.

This chapter will help you to:

• examine the concept of the ‘innovation race’ and the impact on individuals and organisations
• identify how strategic your innovation focus is
• explore the need for a clear sense of purpose and connected process in innovation
• consider the benefits of proactive and sustainable innovation
• appreciate the importance of purpose-driven innovation for greater social responsibility and environmental sustainability
• understand the elements of transformational innovation.

Key challenge: How to prepare for the purpose-driven innovation process

Back in 1985, when hairstyles were boofy and TV was serious business, a television camera zoomed in on a veteran Australian journalist as he stood in the middle of the brutally hot North Australian desert. On one side of him stood a team of highly trained SAS soldiers (an elite military special operations force) in full combat gear. On the other side was a group of traditionally (lightly) dressed Australian Aboriginals. The challenge was for the two teams to race against each other to a set destination. TV cameras would follow each team every step of the way, the winners demonstrating their superior survival skills in the punishing conditions. The Hunting Party was being billed as a major TV event and expectations were high.¹ It would be one of the first ‘reality TV’ programs ever produced.

The contrast between the two groups was striking. The disparity in their clothing stood out, as did the fact that the SAS were significantly larger and more muscular. The soldiers were highly trained, exuded confidence and determination, and could draw on the latest technologies. The Indigenous Australians, on the other hand, had survived the desert conditions for thousands of years (we now know it has been 40 000 years or more) and were quite capable of looking after themselves in the inhospitable outback. They had what you might call the home town advantage.

The temperature in the Northern Australian bush can soar to 50 degrees Celsius, hot enough to fry an egg on a sun-baked stone. The second-driest continent in the world (after its southern neighbour Antarctica), almost 50 per cent of Australia receives less than 25 centimetres of rainfall a year. Desert consumes 44 per cent of the land mass, covering 2.3 million square kilometres. This vast, arid wilderness presents one of the most isolated and difficult environments on earth for flora and fauna, especially humans. Exposure to such high temperatures can threaten vital organs such as the brain and the kidneys and ultimately cause the body simply to shut down. So for most of us it is not only dangerous to be out there alone but can easily become downright deadly.

We can look back to our own potentially life-threatening personal experience with the Australian desert. In our younger years, when we were relatively naïve about the dangers, we had decided to take the ultimate road trip challenge and traverse the country in our old Holden Commodore station wagon. We planned on completing the 4000 km crossing in just three days. We thought we were ready for the challenge, but nothing can prepare you for the vast stretches of road with no more than a scattering of stones and scrubby bushes pockmarking the otherwise flat and featureless Mad Max–like wasteland from horizon to horizon. The Nullarbor Plain — from the Latin nullus (no) arbor (trees) — is a huge stretch of arid desert that sweeps for more than 1100 km at its widest point and covers an area of 200 000 square kilometres. We imagined being stuck out there with no help in sight, and when the air conditioning broke down we thought we might die there. If we kept the windows closed it was like being trapped in a rapid bake oven. But putting the windows down was worse: then it was like being entombed in a fan-forced rapid bake oven.

After a little experimenting, we came up with the idea of hanging a wet towel over the open window. This cooled the wind a little as it passed through the towel, and provided some relief from the constant heat and dust. It took about 10 minutes for the towel to dry out completely, so we had to keep replenishing our water supply and constantly rehydrating the towel, but as a makeshift solution it was not bad. In a small way, we had overcome a survival challenge that allowed us to press on with the journey. The experience gave us a new appreciation of what it could mean to survive in this extreme environment.

Technology vs tradition

In stark contrast to our own paltry challenge, the Aboriginal people had survived this environment for tens of thousands of years with only the most basic technology. Yet the SAS-trained men had all the benefits of modern technological and scientific advances, so they also had clear advantages.

When the race began, the SAS were quickly off and running. On the other side, the Indigenous Australians started ambling along calmly, apparently unconcerned by any pressure to win. The theme music was pumping and the foot cameras were positioned in the centre of the group, set rolling to appear as if they were being swept along for the ride at a cracking pace. Yet there was no real race. The Aboriginal team were clearly not interested in the competitive aspect of the challenge. Was it going to become a hare-and-tortoise scenario, we wondered, or an easy win for the SAS? The camera crews struggled to bring out the drama, but post production would have had meagre pickings to work from when trying to pull a dramatic story from the footage.

After a great deal of build-up and advertising, it seemed there was to be no real story. Only a short time into the race, having not wandered far from the start line, the Aboriginal group found a watering hole (a billabong) they liked and decided to stop right there. They had reached a good position and had no incentive to go further. They simply could not see the purpose of a race for the sake of a race. Their actions actually changed the whole game, and the event that could have been an original Amazing Race was over barely before it had begun. The show flashed across our TV screens, soon to be forgotten, but the lessons have stayed with us ever since.

When you think about it, this outcome has profound implications for the ways we think about progress and innovation. We were all initially glued to our screens in the hope of witnessing a decisive showdown between the state-of-the-art, tech-savvy, trained and tooled-up model on one side and the practical wisdom and experience built up over many generations on the other. The same provocative tension lies behind the concept of what we call ‘the innovation race’. We have come to assume that progress...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Epigraph
• Copyright
• Title page
• ABOUT THE AUTHORS
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• PREFACE
• PART I PREPARATION FOR THE GLOBAL REALITY RACE
• PART II DESTINATIONS
• PART III THE FUTURE OF THE RACE
• INDEX
• MORE WAYS TO GET INNOVATIVE
• ADVERT
• EULA