Peer to Peer Magazine

46 PEER TO PEER: THE QUARTERLY MAGAZINE OF ILTA | WINTER 2016 FEATURES A Structure That Promotes Innovation and respond to it? I would suggest that structure was not part of the equation at first; structure comes aer entrepreneurship. Drucker says that "innovation is the specific function of entrepreneurship." And by "entrepreneurship," he does not mean underfunded startups populated by twenty-something wunderkinds. To Drucker, entrepreneurship means the "effort to create purposeful, focused change in an enterprise's economic or social potential." A Purposeful and Focused Structure According to Drucker, entrepreneurial innovation is a function of discipline –– the purposeful and focused search for opportunities in the seven areas he says are sources for innovation. The question of structure becomes one of how to foster that discipline and focus effectively inside the culture of your organization. The temptation will be to go big, to create a whole new group or several groups aimed at entrepreneurship. On that point, Drucker has a warning: "Effective innovations start small. They are not grandiose. It may be to enable a moving vehicle to draw electric power while it runs along rails, the innovation that made possible the electric streetcar. Or it may be the elementary idea of puing the same number of matches into a matchbox (it used to be 50). This simple notion made possible the automatic filling of matchboxes and gave the Swedes a world monopoly on matches for half a century. By contrast, grandiose ideas for things that will 'revolutionize an industry' are unlikely to work." With Drucker's instruction in mind, the structural question might best be put as, "What is the smallest structural change necessary to enable the disciplined examination and exploitation of opportunities in your market space?" How do you find the simple, powerful ideas that become seeds for vast change? You need a structure that gives priority to that search, and oen that entails removing responsibilities. Let's say you are a senior technologist or a practicing partner. Can you possibly give priority to the disciplined examination of opportunities if you are also charged with keeping Russian hackers out of the IT infrastructure or billing a couple thousand hours a year? Obviously not! Ensuring the survival of your business is not a part-time job. Knowing this gives you a filter for deciding whether to accept your boss's charge to innovate. The first question is not whether you have a budget, title or named group, but whether the organization takes innovation seriously enough to make it someone's principal responsibility. Johnny Appleseed Let's say you get a charge that offers potential for success. What next? Time to start building groups, right? Not really. Before you get to the stage of executing on innovation strategies, figure out what those strategies are. For that to happen, you need to Johnny Appleseed your firm and client base, recognizing that the sources of innovation are distributed both inside and outside the firm. To mine those opportunities, you need eyes and ears at the places where those opportunities present themselves –– a network of connections that can help ensure a continuing flow of opportunities. Consider yourself an all-star if you can set up such a network inside of a year. It can take a career to create a reliable pipeline of opportunities. If you are a chief innovator, this is your career. Once the pipeline is primed, executing is a maer of plain old management: prioritizing, identifying resources, working to budget and schedule, and managing expectations. One of the foremost hazards of a Johnny Appleseed network is disappointed expectations: Everyone who identifies an opportunity wants it to be first priority. Mismanage those expectations, and your pipeline will dry up; nurture them, and your efforts will be sustained for years to come. Forget About Structure The boom line to structuring for innovation is to forget about structure. Focus on cultivating the sources for innovation. Then prioritize, resource and manage. The structure will take care of itself. P2P We innovate not because clients demand it, not because it is in the strategic plan, but because we need to adapt to changing market conditions that, if ignored, can and will kill us.

• Cover