Ask HN: How to have innovation culture at large companies?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9880762

by thetwentyone • 11 years ago

6 14 11 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I'm part of a team trying to propose ways to institutionalize a better culture of innovation. In particular, we are a group of 50ish people in an engineering-like group at a larger company of >1000.

Does HN have suggestions or examples of what (not) to do? It would be nice to be able to point to stories from other organizations.

A couple of ideas that we had: - A policy to let people propose pet projects and then give them 10% time for it. - 'Mini' hackathons (one day or a few hrs/week for a couple of months.

MrTonyD2• 11 years ago

I have a secret I can share. Steve Jobs allowed Edgar Schein to have teams of his grad students follow Steve around and record every conversation and interaction. But Schein made one mistake - He gave Steve the right to veto the final book which was produced. When Steve saw that the book was almost exclusively about him, and didn't put him in a positive light, he refused to let it be published. So Schein rewrote the book into "Organizational Culture" - it is famous because it coins the term "corporate culture" - and it mostly describes Steve and how he created a culture of innovation (even though the examples are based on other executives.) When I read the book while working for Steve it was amazing - it described Steve with incredible accuracy (though, unfortunately, it lacks good examples since Schein couldn't describe how Steve handled specific situations.) For me, the book was like a master class in creating a culture of innovation.

In hindsight, I've often wondered how the benefits of a culture of innovation could be created without the derangement of Steve. Personally, I did my best work for Steve. To a large extent, the most positive thing I remember was that nobody was destroying my motivation to innovate. Every other company where I've worked talks the talk but doesn't walk the walk.

thetwentyone6• 11 years ago

I will look into this book, thanks! Were there any specific items that stood out to you as being important (besides having a Steve Jobs)?

MrTonyD2• 11 years ago

Well, I would have to say that there is a synergy to the techniques - using several of them together and consistently is incredibly important. At some point everybody knows that innovation is important, and it just becomes part of the DNA of the organization. Really, I've never worked anywhere else where we had such a culture. Nobody had to tell you. No speeches.

Mz2• 11 years ago

A policy to let people propose pet projects and then give them 10% time for it.

Oh, yeah, no.

I have read research on this. You can foster a culture of innovation by doing things like giving away theater tickets, giving them time to do whatever the heck they want without proposing anything and seeing if anything useful turns up, and generally giving them more leeway to screw off, not less. The minute you try to slave innovation to results, you kill it. It just dies.

I wish I could recall the name of a book or article or something. I cannot. Innovation is about putting different things together. You want to foster creativity by getting people doing different things and then find a way to capture the value. If you try to determine first if it has value, this will not work. It is a little like the idea that for brainstorming sessions, it is critical that you NOT pass judgment. You just toss out ideas and write them down, no matter how wacky sounding. Then you judge them LATER. Creativity and innovation need to be born of a situation with few constraints. These things do not perform on command. Milking them for value has to come at a later stage.

Start hobbyist type clubs at work. Have social events for people to meet and greet. Get cross connections going. Give away tickets to theater or other enriching experiences. Feed the creative process. Don't try to make it "productive" from the get go. Capturing value has to be a later step in the process.

Best of luck.

thetwentyone6• 11 years ago

Thanks for the perspective. Yea, I was hesitant to suggest pitching an idea before granting the 10% time because a lot of ideas need more time to percolate before sharing. Do you know of cases other than Google about sharing time between the day-to-day and creative projects?

Mz2• 11 years ago

Off the top of my head, no. Sorry.

Someone1234• 11 years ago

I like the 10% thing, but the problem is that a lot of the legitimately innovative products would never be authorised.

The 10% thing, to me, only works if it allows people to escape the internal political machine. Let's say you have an existing product, 1 mil+ LoC and ten years+ old, and some young upstarts want to try and rewrite it from scratch, of course the management is going to outright say "no" because:

A) It would take an entire department many years to accomplish the same task.

B) It won't generate new revenue streams even if successful.

C) It competes with an existing product.

But that's exactly the type of thinking that causes very successful companies to ultimately have the rug pulled out from under them when external developers do the same exact thing, and are able to deliver a more modern alternative in fewer lines of code (because it didn't evolved, it was designed that way) and with less bugs (due to better use of libraries and pre-existing code bases).

I guess what I am getting at is: that term "let people" has a lot of baggage. Ultimately you might just see people using their 10% not to innovate but instead just to do more of the same-old, same-old because that's all management will allow.

I've always wondered if big companies shouldn't try to simulate a "startup." Imagine this: You take ten developers and one manager. The big company continues to pay their normal salary, and they have six months, their own space, and a modest budget to produce whatever they want (no questions asked). The thing they produce is then trialed and if it proves to be successful, there's a personal financial incentive to the eleven people involve (e.g. they get a % cut of the profits for a period).

Essentially do a startup, but take the risk out of it (no financial danger), and keep the incentive (since they personally financially gain). Do one "startup" a year using a different eleven (10 + 1) people. As a bonus you'll likely see a morale gain due to just changing up what people do day to day.

Something can also be said for turning it all into one giant competition. See Steve Jobs with the Lisa vs Mac "war." It might have ultimately got Steve fired, but it also kept both teams on their toes and may have worked if he hadn't have gone overboard with it (and the Lisa in general). When he returned he continuously started projects which ate away at other products Apple produced (e.g. iPhone Vs. iPod, iPad vs. Macbook, and so on).

thetwentyone6• 11 years ago

Thanks for the response. I think the reasons for not requiring authorizations are really good.

I think the 'internal startup' idea is good... Have you had experience with it or know of a company besides Apple that did something like that?

michaelbuddy• 11 years ago

for one, get people out of their chairs consistently, a hell of a lot more often. Creativity is stifled sitting at computers. innovation and problem solving comes from a sythesis of ideas. Humanity sitting at a desk is not a physically optimal way to tap into the brain's higher functioning or generating energy from collaboration.

thetwentyone6• 11 years ago

Makes sense! We think that breaking out of the daily tasks is important. One area that we are also struggling is whether or not to include the sales/product team in this. Typically, we already work on their ideas, but we want to help the engineers develop this influence as well.

alain94040• 11 years ago

One thing you don't need is an innovation department. That's pretty much an oxymoron.

Instead, focus the entire organization to deliver the best possible product for the user. No compromise. That's where innovation is.

thetwentyone6• 11 years ago

I totally agree - you can't force ideas. But what we are trying to improve is that instead of everybody working to meet the daily requirements, that we try and shift the culture to recognize that ideas need room to breathe and time to be worked on. We're trying to find specific implementations of innovation-culture, other than Google's 20% time, as examples of institutionalized ways of promoting idea generation.

thetwentyone6• 11 years ago

Thanks for the responses so far. One thing I think is interesting is how much mindshare Apple has in the innovation field. Are there other companies (in particular non-tech) that stand out?

ptype• 11 years ago

Three things are needed IMO: 1) autonomy 2) upside 3) minimum red tape

Ask HN: How to have innovation culture at large companies?

Related Stories