Escaping from ZITs (Zombie Innovation Traps)
I guess we’re all still interested in the phenomenon of
Steve Jobs, and we probably remember how he visited Xerox’s Palo Alto Research
Center (PARC) back in December 1979 and saw a demonstration of prototype
technologies that included bit-mapped video displays, graphical user interfaces
(GUI) and different types of mouse, and immediately realised that these
prototypes had the potential to differentiate future Apple computers. We note how
Jobs had to go all the way to the top of Xerox to demand a private
demonstration for Apple technical experts, and the (longer than expected) march
to the ground-breaking Apple Macintosh began, followed by Bill Gates supporting
software development for the Mac in order to learn about graphical
environments, which ultimately led to the inclusion of Macintosh features in
Windows. And the rest is history.
I have to admit I have always wondered about the nature of
Xerox itself in funding research into the man-machine interface and yet being
so focused on exploiting only technologies those that assisted the
photocopier business. Interestingly in
2010 Henry Chesborough, reflecting on barriers to innovation noted the impact
of legacy innovation assets and models as blockers for new ideas making the
transition into technologies and declared that (in effect) successful
innovation would require a form of agile innovation leadership to overcome the
legacy or Zombie Innovation Trap of currently-successful models of doing
business.
This phenomenon of being trapped in a particular business
context and unable to visualize or move to alternative business contexts (new
customers, new jobs) to create or exploit new value is a classic Zombie
characteristic. If you go back to the observations made in an earlier blog “How
to Spot a Zombie Organization” you will remember the basic points that indicate
a Zombie Organization (ZO), in that just like Zombies in films they carry their
embedded “innovation trap” behaviours around with them in that their
a) Hunger for fresh human flesh is insatiable, similarly ZOs
consume people, they literally use up their energy through innovation mono-culture
strategies that are ultimately counter-productive (making dead models more efficient,
instead of killing off).
b) Ability to work things out for themselves (like how to
open doors and drive cars) or any complex co-ordinated activity is severely
restricted: thus ZOs lack agility and adaptability.
c) Movement is always clumsy, that ZOs are clumsy because
they pay no attention to their context. They are perpetually surprised when
their environment changes.
At this point it becomes clear that the development of Agile
Innovation Leadership is at a premium because it understands and anticipates the
nature of the Zombie Innovation Trap, and has the skills to build new freedoms
to innovate by consciously constructing and gaming innovation models that fit to
the idea, instead of excluding ideas that cannot be exploited within your
legacy innovation and business models.
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