Sitting through the second day of the DMI Re:Thinking Design conference this past week, it occurred to me that for all of the talk on innovation, the companies most often held-up as the shining examples are nearly impossible for others to follow. While that's a great competitive differentiator for these few companies, it doesn't give others much to gone on when they finally decide they need to jump or perish.
Companies like Apple and Nike are aberrations. For different reasons, their innovation thrives because of unique cultures. Apple has Steve Job's relentlessly demanding vision. Without someone like Steve, lessor companies can't follow this example (it's known as Genius Design and it's incredibly risky). Nike's culture is incredibly focused and their strength is in messaging throughout the entire company--every employee, partner, and (probably) customers--what they stand for, where they're going, and what is "Nike"--and not. That's a little easier to follow for other companies but not much--and it's not terribly reliable over the long term without incredible amounts of internal work.
So what are the innovation models other companies can follow, then? What's GM to do if they can't find another innovation-prodigy to take over the leadership of the company?
There are several different innovation cultures common in organization. From the book, Making Meaning (I co-authored this), this include:
• Structured innovators (about 18% of all companies)
• Creative Innovators (nearly 26%)
• Dynamic Innovators (the majority at 39%)
• Ad Hoc Innovators (10%)
• Innovative Outsourcers (8%)
Only the Creative Innovators led the process from the top. That leaves over two-thirds of the rest to innovate accidentally, or with little collaboration. The outsources, for the most part, give up altogether and just look for innovations to buy-up from others.
There are, however, models evolving that other companies can look to. Google's internal crowd-sourcing is an interesting development to explore. Proctor & Gamble's structural partnerships is another (though, technically, this too was led from the top). Anyone who is lucky enough to see into Intuit (yes, Intuit) will see an amazing model of innovation growing within the company, though it isn't yet so apparent in the products and services visible to the outside. Undoubtedly, there are more models to watch but these aren't easy to teach since the cases for these haven't yet been written (and the current ones available leave a lot to be desired in understanding innovation culture and models).
That doesn't mean that GM is completely out of luck if it desires to innovate. However, it means that it will likely have to innovate its entire culture along the way and, very likely, have to invent its own model to do so, something I doubt is on the restructuring To Do list.