What the Innovation Man forgot

You have got to take a look at this really great IBM commercial that brings home a point close to my and my co authors heart.

Companies often do get stuck in the ideation stage (Discussed in the post on the Discovery capability). Coming up with ideas, even good ones, is actually the easy part. At one of our workshops a company representative ended the day by repeating implementation, implementation, and implementation that is what it is all about.

Of course that is not so easy when you realize all the politics, powerbases and uncertainties you have to deal with. The way around this is continually doing and experimenting and articulating the impact and implications of the results (Gina discussed this in her earlier posts on incubation and acceleration). Developing good experiments around markets, resources and organizing as well as technology and executing these experiments thoughtfully gets you to the level where you can begin to be poised for success. The data helps build the political coalitions you need to move ahead.