Hiring best employees pays off for innovative organisations

BOOK REVIEW: The Innovator's DNA – mastering the five skills of disruptive Innovatorsby Jeff Dyer, Hal Gregerson and Clayton M Christensen; Harvard Business Review Press; €26.99

INNOVATIVE ORGANISATIONS mirror the DNA of innovative individuals.

They systematically engage in a five stage process of associating, questioning, observing, networking and experimenting to trigger new ideas.

They also seek out a critical mass of people with strong discovery skills and create environments where these individuals thrive.

Among the key conclusions presented by the three academic authors of this well-crafted book, based on an eight-year research project is that if you want to create a successful, disruptively innovative organisation you need to attract these types of people.

Apple’s Steve Jobs knows this and he’s cited here saying the dynamic range between what an average person can accomplish and what the best person can achieve is generally two to one but in the field he was interested in it was 50 to 100 to I.

A small team of A+ players therefore can run rings around a giant team of B and C players so going for the cream of the cream truly pays off.

Smart companies look for individuals who have a track record of discovery, who possess deep expertise in at least one knowledge field and who also demonstrate passion and a desire to make a difference.

As part of its hiring process, Google for example has come up with a 21 question test, part of which involves some tongue-in-cheek questions designed to test for creativity and a sense of humour.

One asks candidates what is the most beautiful maths equation ever derived while another says, “This space left intentionally blank. Please fill in with something that improves on emptiness.”

People who “get” this line of questioning are exactly the type Google wants to hire.

Much of this book is spent analysing what forward-thinking companies such as Apple, Skype, Amazon and PG do and what sets them apart.

Extending the culture of disruptive innovation throughout a company is often the hardest task.

Establishing innovation as everybody’s job philosophy involves creating a safe space for others to take on the status quo, a “psychological safety” zone in which team members willingly express opinions, take risks, run experiments and acknowledge mistakes without punishment.

According to the authors, to move beyond the mantra, top leaders need to actively innovate themselves and employees need to be given significant time and real resources to come up with innovative ideas, with at least 25 per cent of the corporate budget allocated to platform or breakthrough innovation projects. Innovation teams should be small, as in Amazon’s idea of the “Two Pizza Team” meaning that teams should be small enough to be fed by two pizzas.

By keeping its teams small the business knows it can work on a larger number of projects and can go down a larger number of alleys searching for new products or services.

The design firm IDEO takes this idea to another level with the slogan “ail often to succeed sooner”.

It posts the phrase company-wide to remind employees that if they are not failing, they are not innovating.

Good companies knowingly take risks in the pursuit of innovation but they mitigate the inherent risks associated with innovation by deploying the right people and by providing the right structures so that teams have proper autonomy levels.

Crucially, this approach creates a culture that not only ignites new ideas; it also takes them to market.

A critical insight from the author’s research is that one’s ability to generate innovative ideas is not merely a function of the mind but also a function of behaviours.

The good news in this that if we change our behaviours – both individually and corporately – we can improve our creative impact.

This is an engaging book that blends solid fieldwork with sharp observation and it is laid out in an accessible easy to digest the lesson format without patronising the reader.

The authors rarely make a point without referencing multiple organisations in order to back up their thesis – perhaps overly so in some cases – where a single and slightly more detailed case study might have done the job.

Notwithstanding that, it’s a well-constructed and well-researched work that adds to the sum of knowledge on innovation.

Frank Dillon is a business journalist