Innovation Needs Convictions

By: Damien Kopp

We all know Jeff Bezos as the tech billionaire who has built the world’s second-largest retailer from the ground up. Such is the scale of Amazon’s operations that almost 1 out of every 153 American workers is employed by the organisation.

But did you know that the founder of this massive corporation was flipping burgers as a teenager?

Bezos, and similar figures who have revolutionised our world, are prime examples of what I call change agents. Despite their different backgrounds, what they all have in common is a strong conviction that they can bring their innovative ideas to life.

How to develop a conviction?

Convictions are formed by opinions. Opinions are born from hypotheses. Hypotheses are drawn from observations and insights.

If you have a strong opinion of how the world should be, you are in an excellent position to innovate.

For example, let’s talk about paperless payments.

Have you ever reached for your debit card, only to hear the dreaded words, “Sorry, we only take cash”?

That used to drive me absolutely mad (and it still does, although in fairness most businesses tend to accept cards now).

My feelings of frustration towards this scenario were grounded in the following reasons:

• I don’t like to count change, carry coins and bills.
• Paper-based transactions are slow, inefficient and add to queues at the cash out
• I like to track my spending
• The first credit card was invented back in 1950 by the Diners Club, so using plastic to pay is by no means a revolutionary concept!

Frustrations can be a great source of innovation. Frustrations are emotions that you can convert into insights and observations. A typical thought process goes something like this:

Maybe it’s not just me? Maybe others are equally frustrated?

In fact there are many people who find cash inconvenient, and if so, maybe there is a market for cashless payments?

Therefore, I have my hypothesis: many people are likely to prefer cashless payments for daily transactions.

The more I talk to people and validate my hypothesis, the stronger I feel that something needs to change.

At some point, I will get absolutely convinced that something will change. The next step is to decide if I want to lead this change or just wait and follow.

In my case, my frustration led me to work on designing and deploying contactless payment systems across transport and retail on three continents for almost a decade. Such a great opportunity to bring convenience to millions of daily commuters and shoppers!

As the legendary Peter Drucker once said:

“Innovation is the means by which the entrepreneur either creates new wealth- producing resources or endows existing resources with enhanced potential for creating wealth.”

There are other ways to find sources of innovation. I highly recommend reading Where to Look for Insight, a Harvard Business Review article by Sawhney and Khosla from the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University.

Once you have a deep conviction that something needs to change, you can start thinking about how to execute the ideal solution as a change agent.

How to bring a conviction to life?

In my earlier post about Embracing the New, I highlighted that innovators must be change agents to obtain buy-in from others due to their leadership qualities. Their resilience enables them to push forward and execute their grand ideas despite resistance.

Therefore, bringing a conviction to life involves building a base of followers through charisma and emotional intelligence, so that they can help you achieve your lofty goals. From customers to investors, you can gain support from key figures through the sheer force of your personality.

Just look at Mark Zuckerberg and his ascent from college geek to billionaire founder of the Largest Autocracy on Earth. Or how Elon Musk went from creating an online directory to now running multiple valuable companies including SpaceX and Tesla. Both visionaries had a strong view of what the world should look like and relied on their convictions to inspire their people.

How to allow convictions to emerge in an organisation?

Enabling strong opinions in your organisation is quite the balancing act.

On one hand, you ideally want to build an effective engineering culture where people have the space and freedom to tinker away at their desks. But, on the other hand, you need guardrails in place to ensure their work is aligning with the company’s direction, values and standards, too.

Convictions fuel innovation. Corporate obedience crushes it.

As a result, you need to develop a framework for innovation to evolve within the fundamental bounds of a corporate structure. A great example of such a system is Google’s 20% rule, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20% of their working time on projects of their choice, unrelated to their usual job responsibilities. Two of Google’s most innovative products — Gmail and Google News — are the result of this brilliant policy!

Final Thoughts

The takeaway here is that it’s hardly enough to just encourage new ideas. These concepts can only see the light of day with a framework to institutionalise the creative process end to end; including how to ideate, define, prioritize, invest, support, deploy and adopt these innovations across the company.

This is what Peter Drucker calls the “systematic practice of innovation”, with the aim being to find the right balance between compliance and creativity. Indeed, while there are several factors involved in the birth of novel products, most of it comes down to focused and purposeful work.

How about you? What fuels your convictions? Where did your convictions lead you to?

Who is Damien?

Damien is a Fractional technology leader and innovator at MISSION+. With over 22 years of experience in digital innovation, product strategy, and technology consulting across Europe, North America, and Asia, Damien understands what it takes to drive meaningful change by making the most of technology and talent. Reach out at hello@mission.plus to learn how you can start encouraging innovation in your organisation.

Originally published at https://www.koncentrik.co/p/convictions on 25th April 2024.