Fortune Conference: "Innovation transforms the enterprise"

Some interesting thoughts about innovation from the Future Conference on Innovation (see video down)

1) Innovation spurs during crises, not during 20 % free time (immune system of company is down, but don't let the people in the crisis solve the problem)

2) Ideas don't work, people do

3) Big ideas will fail, things always work out differently. Plan, go, adjust

4) The true asset of a company is not it's people. People come and go. It's the company culture. If a star does not fit with the culture, the star has to go

5) Large teams don't innovate --> too much compromise

6) 'Herding cow syndrome' - Large companies don't do small projects, there would be too many to manage. Since disruptive innovations start from small projects, large companies hardly develop disruptive innovations. Small projects that change focus & tactic through trial & error week to week have difficult getting support in large 'PowerPoint culture' companies

7) Some barriers inside the company for creativity is necessary to filter the persistent good ideas

8) In large firms people's behavior changes from 'an appetite for success' to 'afraid of failure'. How to reward failure? Allow failure?

9) Entrepreneurs that have failed learned more lessons than entrepreneurs that have never failed and think they can 'pitch a perfect game' (lucky or played safe)

10) PowerPoint makes it look like you know, while actually you don't know (about growth plans)

11) Keep the company mission interesting in order to sustain innovation.

12) Small firm -> constant feedback from customers to engineers: 'this product sucks'. In large firms the distance between customer and engineer is too large. Solution is to bring customer physically to large group of engineers (zoo-like), not to let sales people make a PowerPoint through a survey

13) Most innovative ideas come from people under 30 (23, 24 years old)

14) Apps & Cloud become tools, not the product/services (and will therefore be for free)

15) You go to the customer as anthropologist, not as sense-taker (don't ask what he wants, see what he needs)

16) Innovation is a team sport, and it's a full-contact sport