Ted Chan MBA, DIC

THE POWER OF
INNOVATION
7 Strategies to transform your
organisation into an innovative
and future-ready one
Published by Thinking Trends Pte. Ltd., Singapore.

Copyright 2014 @ Ted Chan

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a

retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission in writing of
Thinking Trends Pte. Ltd.

Every reasonable effort has been made by the publisher to trace the copyright
holders of material in this book. Any errors or omissions should be notified in writing
to the publisher, who will endeavour to rectify the situation for any reprints and
future editions.

www.thinkingtrends.com

Designed by Vincent Saldana

 S
imply because you’re reading
this, I am certain you’re already
completely convinced of the need
to innovate. You know the competitive
marketplace as well as I do – hungry
competitors, increased sophistication in
consumer demands, rising costs, reduced life
cycles, marketing and branding challenges
- the list goes on.

1
THE POWER OF INNOVATION

With that daunting backdrop, why does it seem to be the case that many
organisations are just not innovating? Is it because innovation is not well
understood these days? Is it possible that, especially when innovation has
become such a generic term – a cliché, that it doesn’t mean anything
much anymore?

Or is it because innovation looks like a journey into the unknown; because

we are inherently afraid of change, and that we know from experience
that it’s difficult? The easy option seems to be just to ignore it.

Or is it because we think we don’t have resources or the “creative talent”

to undertake innovation?

Or is it just simply because we don’t know how to innovate?

Your business might have been running well for quite a while; but you’ve
learnt the hard way that benchmarking and driving efficiencies are no
longer enough. At best, they can try to help us to keep up, but not keep
ahead, in the game; only innovation can achieve that for us.

Here, I’d like to share seven strategies to transform your

organisation into an innovative and future ready one.

2
THE POWER OF INNOVATION

1 Build Innovative Teams

The heart of any organisation is its people. The reality is that it
can only be innovative if its people are. Why? Because only people, not
machines, can drive innovative activities.

How do you go about building innovative teams?

First, hire innovative people

Who are these people? They:

Come from diverse technical and work backgrounds

Find new and different ways of seeing
things and enjoy innovative work
Can bridge the divide between technical theory
and what customers actually want

How do you hire these innovators? Doesn’t sound easy, does it? After all,
everyone is looking for the same thing. The answer is simple and startling
– you’ve already hired them. Yes, you read that right – this is the
great truth that the consultants have probably never told you: anyone,
absolutely anyone, can be innovative. You may not think of them as
innovative right now and they might not see themselves that way either
- yet. But your goal is clear: build the innovation capability of the current
team.

All it takes is to understand how to be innovative and the mindset that

3
THE POWER OF INNOVATION

you need to go out and do it. If you think about it, the chances are that you
already know your business and industry well and what the big problems
are – it’s just that you have to look somewhere else for the answers. This
is where, with the right training, you can turn your staff into “internal
consultants”.

Now I mentioned about teams and I cannot overemphasise this vital

point. Innovation is not a solo act but a team sport. Do you know how
many of the world’s most valuable innovations came about because of
the collaboration of different people with different skills? The answer is
– a lot! Take Steve Jobs for example – he’s been credited with creating
breakthrough and innovative products, such as the iPod and the iPad
that rocked our world. Did he do all that by himself? Of course not – he
was simply a man that was capable, through the force of his personality,
his energy levels and ability to inspire, of getting huge teams of talented
people to work together and make those amazing breakthroughs. That
team included the guys who know all about batteries and plastics.

So my point is – first, set up teams for innovation and align them

with a shared vision.

4
THE POWER OF INNOVATION

2 Embrace Change
and Think Differently
When I talk about embracing change, it’s about adopting a new attitude
towards change and aligning our behaviour with that. Even business
greats like Jack Welch have said, “I take absolutely no comfort in where
we are today.”

To me, embracing change is about moving out of the

comfort zone. It’s about saying goodbye to the status quo. It
will involve some risks and tolerance of uncertainty.

You might already be innovating. However, we tend to focus on the

“known”, such as product or process improvement, and sometimes we
can miss out on what customers really want. All analyses of product
innovations show that almost every category is hyper-contested – in
other words, there is oversupply for them. Innovation is irrelevant if it does
not meet a customer’s wants or needs, and increasingly both.

Studies of successful companies are clear that they use different

types of innovation – be it their distinctive profit model,
network, structure, process, product system, service, channel, brand and
customer engagement. Other experts might describe them differently
but it remains that there are many different pathways to innovation.

Building a better mousetrap is no longer enough. Going beyond the

product itself and looking at all the other types of innovation (including

5
THE POWER OF INNOVATION

those above) – the entire thought process and building of strategy need
to be re-looked at.

Just to give one example, Starbucks is not just about the coffee – it’s about
offering a 3rd place between home and office (an alternative meeting
venue, if you will). Likewise, Amazon has now diversified well beyond
what was its original raison d’etre - books.

Another key to embracing change is about adopting

technology, though we don’t focus exclusively on it. Just look at
how technology has benefited healthcare, education, communication
and business in different ways. For example, e-learning now allows us to
learn at our own pace with ease, we can communicate with someone as
if they were just next to us, while automation has drastically reduced the
cost of production.

Even so, innovation need not be something big, it could just be a

simple, effective and elegant solution.

6
THE POWER OF INNOVATION

3 Set Your Intent – It

Doesn’t Have to be a
Journey into the Unknown
In Alice in Wonderland, when Alice met the Cheshire Cat she asked,
“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” “That
depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat. “I don’t
much care where,” said Alice. “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,”
said the Cat.

Get the point? Many innovations fail because the objective or intent is
not clearly set. The fact is: you can, and must, set your intent.
Like most other work we do, innovation has to have a mission. What is
innovation intent? It is basically a clear articulation of the initiative’s goal.

The best innovators are certain what they wish to accomplish and so they
focus on a small number of ideas and make sure that they execute well.
What they want to achieve and what it looks like are well-defined and
that is coupled with a clear method of getting there.

However, having a set intent does not mean following a set path rigidly.
To get to the same destination, there could be many paths. This means we
have to be flexible and agile to re-chart our path, or even
ditching an effort if we need to. Along the journey, we might even find
unexpected gains. Interestingly, some famous innovations actually came
about as a result of accident, albeit a happy one. For example, researchers
at Pfizer were trying to stimulate receptors in the heart in order to treat

7
THE POWER OF INNOVATION

heart disease when they discovered that it had the effect of stimulating
other parts of the male anatomy! The rest was history, Viagra was born
and it has generated billions of dollars for Pfizer ever since; so don’t rule
out happy accidents or sheer serendipity as an important source
of innovation.

Also, a journey has milestones, metrics and incentives. So it is important

that, in addition to the over-arching goals, short-term goals are set.
Progress has to be tracked and the right behaviours rewarded.

Embarking on a journey focused on innovation also means making it a

habit. Innovation should never be about what we do after work, but how
we work. In that way we can start to ‘internalise’ innovation and create
a powerful momentum to innovate. If this is practised throughout the
organisation, it will not be long before an innovative culture will emerge.

8
THE POWER OF INNOVATION

4 Focus on Discipline

Many organisations fell into the trap of thinking that they, by having more
creative employees, could be more innovative; so they would conduct a
lot of brainstorming sessions with facilitators yelling “hey, there is no such
thing as a bad idea”, and festooning their meeting room with lots of toys,
post-it notes, whiteboards and finger food.

While brainstorming helps, it is not enough. There must be a structure

and process to transform an insight into an idea and into implementation.

Having discipline means having a

systematic approach to innovation.
In fact, some studies have shown the number one reason for failing to
innovate is not actually lack of creativity – the problem is lack of focus
and follow-up, or discipline as some authors called it. Author Jim Colin
went as far to say, “Creativity dies in an indisciplined environment”. In one
sense, the easy part is instigating the idea; where it gets much trickier is
the implementing.

This means that you need to do the following:

Analyse patterns of innovation in your industry

Identify market and demographic changes
Become familiar with emerging technologies

9
THE POWER OF INNOVATION

Explore innovation tactics

Build innovation capability and the right structure for it

Above all, it has to be a pragmatic approach. The reality is that your

chances of success will go right off the chart if you are simply able to
innovate with discipline.

One way of encouraging staff commitment to innovation is to provide

rewards. Such rewards can be monetary and in the form of salary
increments, discretionary bonuses and share awards. But they can be
non-monetary as well; after all, taking a disciplined approach does not
have to mean not having fun - people are intrinsically drawn to doing
something they enjoy. Fun is very much a reward itself. Bottom line? Make
it fun, make it rewarding!

“Innovation is the creativity that ships.”

—Steve Jobs

10
THE POWER OF INNOVATION

5 Explore Tried
and Tested Ideas
People rarely grasp the fact that very little innovation is actually new; as
the old saying goes, there really is “nothing new under the sun.”

Most successful innovations are not brand-new inventions, but rather

they are different ideas put together to make them new and noteworthy.

To echo that, Mike Vance once described creativity, and I would say the
same about innovation, as the “making of the new and
rearranging of the old”.
The good news is that there are hundreds of tried and test ideas, or
tactics, out there. While some are relatively new, many have been around
for many decades. Here are just a few examples:

Subscription as a business model

Freemium as a profit model
Crowdsourcing as a process
Certification as a branding exercise
Concierge as a service model

What this means is good news - we do not need to reinvent the wheel.
The key is to use what already exists as the starting point for innovation
and then build on them and the strengths and attributes they already
possess.

11
THE POWER OF INNOVATION

Using tried and tested ideas is also a good means of de-risking

your business. While innovation requires a certain amount of risk to be
taken, innovators have to manage risks carefully. By observing how others
have successfully or unsuccessfully employed tactics, we can gather
valuable insights into what might or might not work.

Having said that, this doesn’t mean you should stop sending your staff
for creativity training. Creativity is useful to develop new ideas and to be
able to think out of the box; but having a toolbox of existing ideas and
products is going to give you a better headstart.

12
THE POWER OF INNOVATION

6 Move Beyond
Benchmarking,
Productivity and Simple
Innovations
At the start of the new Millennium, you could hardly move without coming
across a benchmarking exercise to determine what the competition was
doing, how you compared and what needed to be done to beat them.
The problem with that approach is the time lag factor – just because
something is the flavour of the month now doesn’t mean that it will still
be in five years time.

Tom Peters quotes two professors in the Financial Times who have said that,
“To grow, organisations need to break out of a vicious cycle of competitive
benchmarking and imitation.” Paul Sloane also said, “Implementing best
practice is copying yesterday, innovation is inventing tomorrow.”

Regardless, we still make use of benchmarking to see where we are inferior

to our competitors.

Typically, productivity is defined as the economic measure of output for

every unit of input, making it a vital factor for businesses that want to
accomplish more with less. This definition is especially true for businesses
with scarce or limited resources. However, as said earlier, efficiency is no
longer enough. Organic Growth, spurred by innovation, is
critical to achieve breakthrough results. Having said that, you can’t ditch

13
THE POWER OF INNOVATION

productivity while you innovate. However, studies have shown that there
is a positive link between innovation and productivity.

Simple innovation, while good for a start, is not enough for long-term
success. It can build a lead on competitors, but it doesn’t create exciting
brands and platforms. As the market becomes more complicated, it
demands more sophisticated innovation, which uses many types of
innovation - combined elegantly and orchestrated with care. Research
shows that top innovators use a higher number of types of innovations.
Integrating different types of innovation can help deliver superior financial
results.

14
THE POWER OF INNOVATION

7 Collaborate, Collaborate,
Collaborate
In today’s hyper-connected world, there is no advantage to be gained
by trying to do things by yourself. Collaboration or network
innovation allows companies to take advantage of other
companies’ processes, technologies, offerings, channels and brands,
pretty much every part of a business. In fact, collaboration has become
almost mandatory due to the increasing complexity of products, service
and experience.

This can take the form of strategic alliances, complementary partnerships,

cross-licensing, consortiums, joint ventures and so on.

When we collaborate, we will be able to:

Share risk and cost

Access and create new markets
Obtain additional resources
Gain access to knowledge and expertise
Reduce development time

Alibaba, for example, has invested in SingPost and will leverage its
extensive logistics network to strengthen its e-commerce capabilities with
better delivery services. In return, SingPost would benefit from Alibaba’s
expertise in e-commerce, technology and business volumes.

15
THE POWER OF INNOVATION

Collaboration with customers helps us to understand what they really

want; after all, innovation is about solving customers’ problems or adding
value to them. By understanding customers deeply, we can not only
determine what they want now, but what they might want in the future.

In Singapore, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) for example, also

work with customers to co-develop innovative products and market-
driven technologies - the Tan Tock Seng Hospital does this with medical
products and technologies.

SPRING, the government enterprise promotion agency, has introduced

schemes such as the Enhanced Partnerships for Capability Transformation
(PACT) to support collaborations between SMEs and large enterprises as
well the Collaborative Industry Project (CIP) which supports partnerships
with private and public industry players to generate sector-specific
productivity solutions. The amount allocated to this project, for example,
is $100 million over three years. With these vehicles and the associated
financial assistance, there is really little excuse for not collaborating.

16
THE POWER OF INNOVATION

Summary
Innovation will always look obvious when you look back, but it’s not as
clear cut at the beginning. It’s never an easy road to get from an idea to an
implementation. There will be times as a leader when you second guess
yourself and other stakeholders may question or doubt your ability to see
things through. Your job is to believe in it and sustain the effort. It requires
a lot of resilience.

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos said, “Any time you do something big, that’s disruptive,
there will be critics. You listen to them, because you want to see, always
testing, is it possible they are right? But if you hold back and you say, “No,
we believe in this vision,” then you just stay heads down, stay focused and
you build out your vision.”

Innovation does not require a revolution. If we believe in the innovation,

using a systematic approach will increase our success. The real deal is to
act, to choose to innovate and take the steps necessary to bring about
change.

17
THE POWER OF INNOVATION

About Ted Chan

As one of Asia Pacific’s most in-demand speakers
and seminar leaders on Innovation, Creativity and
Change, Ted Chan shares innovative yet practical
strategies for thriving in this highly dynamic
competitive world.

Ted is the Founder and CEO of Thinking Trends

Pte Ltd and key Faculty Member of The Innovators’
Institute.

Ted’s unique understanding of issues, trends and technologies can

be attributed to his 20 years of corporate experience at some of the
world’s top companies such as Cisco Systems, Amdocs, Telesat, Stanley
Black & Decker and Singapore Technologies, where he has held senior
and leadership positions in strategic planning, sales and marketing and
innovation.

Today, Ted has conducted workshops for hundreds of companies and

spoken to tens of thousands of managers and leaders from private
businesses, government agencies and non-profit organisations.

His vision is to empower organisations with a versatile and multi-

skilled workforce that has the skills, tools and knowledge ready-built for
innovation and change.

Ted can be reached at tedchan@thinkingtrends.com

18
THE POWER OF INNOVATION

About Thinking Trends

Thinking Trends offers an all-in-one consulting, solutions and service
delivery to businesses, with the goal of maximising the benefits of
innovation, human capital, development and marketing.

Thinking Trends’ mission is to give businesses the power to innovate,

manage change and increase productivity.

Organisations boosted by Thinking Trends’ and its consultants’ services

include Abacus, Accenture, Brocade, Canon, Fuji Xerox, Singapore Press
Holdings, A-Star, REC Corp, MINDEF, Legoro Int’l, Mapletree Investments,
Ministry of Manpower, People’s Association, Singapore Civil Defence Force
and Workforce Development Agency.

Thinking Trends offers customised and public workshops, keynote

speeches, executive coaching and consulting services.

Please visit www.thinkingtrends.com, email info@thinkingtrends.com or

call us at +65-6638-3861 for more information on how we can help you.

19
THE POWER OF INNOVATION

References
Keeley, Pikkel, Quinn and Walters. 2013. Ten Types of Innovation.
Deloitte development LLC. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Tucker, Robert. 2011. Innovation is Everybody’s Business: How to Make Yourself

Indispensable in Today’s Hypercompetitive World. John Wiley & Sons.

Wulfen, Gijs Van. 2013. The Innovation Expedition, A visual toolkit to start innovation.
BIS Publishers.

Executing Innovation: Expert Solutions to Every Challenge. 2009.

Harvard Business Press.

Andriopoulos, Constantine and Dawson, Patrick. 2009.

Managing Change, Creativity & Innovation. Sage Publications Ltd.

Stamm, Bettina Von. 2008. Managing Innovation, Design and Creativity.

2nd Edition. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Harvard Business Review on Inspiring and Executing Innovation. 2011.

Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation.

Harvard Business Review, Managing Creativity and Innovation. 2003.

Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation.

Davila, Epstein, Shelton. 2006. Making Innovation Work, How to manage it,
Measure it, and profit from it. Wharton School Publishing.

SMEs to Drive Next Phase of Clinician-Driven Innovation. 2014. Tan Tock Seng Hospital
website. http://www.ttsh.com.sg/about-us/newsroom/press-releases/article.
aspx?id=3676

SingPost and Alibaba Group to Form Strategic Collaboration to Grow International

E-commerce Logistics Business. 2014. http://www.singpost.com/download/
AboutSingPost/Media/NewsReleases/2014/pr20140528.pdf

20