重新定义“创新”的时候到了

    直面并回答这些问题绝非易事，但思考这些问题，将有助于促进产品和服务的创新以及业务的发展。敢于另辟蹊径而不只是停留于奇思妙想可以产生长远的效益。换言之，墨守陈规可能加速贵公司在竞争中被淘汰的速度，而摆脱传统（尽可能不落窠臼地打理业务）可能能让贵公司存活的时间超出批评人士和竞争对手的预期，IBM和谷歌（Google）便是明证。

    2007年，也就是五年前，著名管理策略大师加里•哈默在著作《管理大未来》（The Future of Management）一书探讨了公司管理创新的紧迫性，并重点突出了IBM和谷歌这两 “蓝丝带”（blue ribbon）和“连续”（serial）管理的创新者。他描述了谷歌和IBM当时的不断再造自我，如今这两家公司还在这么做。如今，IBM已经屹立了百年而不倒，就是因为它能不断地自我调整，突破现有的核心业务，不断转型，从一家硬件生产商脱胎为服务提供商和咨询行业的领头羊。顺时而动一直是它的强项，古板守旧绝不是它的作风。而谷歌也已经华丽转身，转向了移动操作系统、无人驾驶汽车和其他众多业务领域。你绝对想不到，其实早在上世纪90年代末，这家网络搜索引擎巨头还在和雅虎（Yahoo）竞争时，就已经开始在这些方向上的探索。

    那么，作为一家公司或者在公司内部，如何能最大限度地提高灵活性和适应性呢？作为管理者，如何在千头万绪中更好地管理创新呢？同时，我们应该如何重新定义创新？下面这些建议值得尝试。

    1.尝试摆脱标准业务模式的束缚。以赛诺菲（Sanofi）为例，2月初该公司宣布季度利润实现增长，预计2012年至2015年间销售额至少平均增长5%。这家医药巨头正面临Plavix 等知名药物专利到期的挑战，但该公司也在新领域进行了大胆的尝试，其中之一便是糖尿病解决方案。赛诺菲举办了一场公开竞赛，让手机软件开发商设计糖尿病管理工具，比如监控和分析食品摄入量的软件。竞赛的目的是是迅速发掘新的应用软件，将获胜软件作为赛诺菲的产品推向市场，而这个产品与赛诺菲先前专注制药的业务没有丝毫联系。

    2. 雇佣不同类型的员工。frog公司聘请不同背景的人来管理这家全球创新咨询公司。除了MBA、工程师和工业设计师，我们的团队里还有以前表演过空中飞人的杂技演员和表演系科班出身的人，协助领导一些项目，为财富500强公司提供技术解决方案和业务策略。我们发现，丰富多样的背景经验和聪明才智常常可以引出一系列全新的思考和做事方式。IBM早就明白这一点；上世纪五六十年代，该公司就曾聘请著名设计师查尔斯•伊姆斯和雷•伊姆斯夫妇、甚至包括著名雕刻家野口勇这样的人为其创新项目提供建议。

    3. 利用“大数据”加深对的客户理解，而不仅仅是摆出老大的架势，监测消费者的行为。利用搜集到的真实数据，思考如何改善和提高产品和服务，而不仅仅是判断能向某个特定人群有针对性地出售什么产品。比方说，麦肯锡（McKinsey）研究显示，麦当劳（McDonald's）记录和分析顾客流量，用于重新设计店面布局，从而提高了顾客流量，而一些企业电脑硬件制造商也在根据用户数据安排预防性修复。

    These questions, which can be tough to confront and to answer, are not only good for innovating your offerings, but they're also generally good for business too. Daring to be different and not just think different can reap long-term dividends. In other words, doing business as usual means you could be out of business sooner then you think. Straying from tradition--conducting business as unusually as you can-- might keep you in business longer than your critics and competitors have expected--as IBM and Google have proved.    

    In 2007, only half a decade ago, Gary Hamel wrote about the urgency for companies to engage in management innovation and highlighted these two "blue ribbon," "serial" management innovators in his book, The Future of Management. He outlined how Google and IBM were constantly re-inventing themselves at the time—and today, they continue to do so. IBM has lasted to celebrate its 100th anniversary because it is always shape-shifting, famously and steadily breaking away from its core businesses to evolve from a hardware maker into a service provider and thought leader. Its ability to adapt has been its strength; it is far from a stodgy relic. Google has nimbly moved into mobile operating systems, unmanned vehicles, and numerous other directions that you'd never imagine the search engine giant pursuing back in the late 1990s, when it was a competitor to Yahoo!

    So, how to best become more flexible and adaptive as a corporation, or within a corporation? How can you, as an executive, better manage creativity amidst chaos? Indeed, how can one re-define innovation? These tactics are worth a try.

    1. Try breaking away from standard business models. Take Sanofi, which in early February announced quarterly profits were up and that it would likely see sales grow by at least five percent on average between 2012-2015. The pharmaceutical giant is facing expiring patents on its well-known medicines such as Plavix, but it is stretching into new areas with daring new twists. One is diabetes solutions, for which Sanofi held an open competition for mobile-phone application developers to design diabetes-management tools, such as services that monitor and analyze food intake. The goal is to quickly scout for fresh apps and then market the winner as a Sanofi product--one that has nothing to do with Sanofi's previous business model focusing on making drugs.

    2. Hire a different type of employee. At frog, we hire people with a variety of backgrounds to manage a global innovation consultancy. Along with MBAs, engineers, and industrial designers, we've added former trapeze artists and performance-studies majors to our team, to help lead projects for Fortune 500 companies on technology solutions and business strategy. We've found that providing a variety of smart and experienced perspectives can often lead to, well, a spectrum of fresh ways of thinking and doing. IBM knew this; the company hired designers such as Charles and Ray Eames and even sculptor Isamu Noguchi to advise on innovation projects back in the 1950s and 1960s.

    3. Harness "Big Data" to better understand your customer—but not as a "Big Brother" corporation that wants to monitor behavior. Use data collection to help you understand what can you fix and improve about your products and services based on real input, not just what can you sell to a particular demographic. McKinsey research has shown, for instance, that McDonald's tracks and analyzes customer traffic to re-design store layouts for better flow, and that some manufacturers of enterprise computer hardware are scheduling pre-emptive repairs based on user data.