Culture Briefings

Fortune Innovation Forum 2006- Part 1 (Gary Hamel)

Note: This is Part 1 of series of posts on the Fortune Innovation Forum I was lucky to attend last week in New York. I attended the conference with hopes of gleaning more insight about innovation and how it can be applied to entrepreneurship.

The primary focus of the conference was sustaining innovation within management. Gary Hamel, who is known for coining the word/concept core competence (?!) opened the first day with a 90 or so minute presentation on continous management innovation. His presentation failed to impress me - while is was most certainly provocative, it lacked a certain element of realism. It was one of those ideas that looks great on paper but incredibly difficult to translate in real-life. His assumption that every employee within a company thinks of his/her job as a career threw me off. His presentation was peppered with examples of how other companies (Google, Grameen Bank, Toyota, Whole Foods, Visa) have successfully managed to instill innovation in their company culture but it lacked solidity. Haven’t we read enough articles about Google and Whole Foods in Fast Company and Fortune?

In all fairness to Hamel, he did inspire the staid, white-collar, internet-illiterate executives that crowded the auditorium. He is a powerful orator and often hearing someone convincingly tell you what you might have already read, is more effective. Perhaps it’s why people pay such obscene amounts to attend such conferences?

I’m not a big fan of concepts and fancy words and diagrams and processes that these consultants come up with and invariably become famous for. That’s the problem with academics and consultants I think. Hamel reminds me of that saying, Those who can, do it. Those you can’t, teach.

The Big IDEA according to Hamel:

• Dynamic shifts come from management innovation
• He presented examples of companies that have no hierarchy and companies (Google, W.L Gore) that allow their companies a percentage of time to work on their pet projcets. He pushed the idea that these innovative management practices should be adopted by other companies as well.
• Leadership has to be about how people can serve their goals while simultaneously serving the company goals. (This makes sense, I wouldn’t want to work for a company where I was a mere pawn of the machine)
• A survey he conducted showed at LSE showed that people in general believe that it takes a crisis to change the company. He encouraged companies to change that paradigm and think differently. Work against the grail.
• I loved the analogy he drew between innovations and cities. Cities are factories for social innovation, he said. They are diverse and there’s something new everyday. The chance for serendipity doesn’t diminish.
• Future starts at the fringe (Remember what Joshua Onysko of Pangea Organics said about the future and the fringe?)

Your thoughts?