Experience has shown that been that barriers to innovation are often company culture, employee workload, and myopic vision. There are some commonalities which present:
Company culture – some companies are so large that they become so bureaucratic that it becomes impossible to effect significant change without a specialist department. The reason being that people do not have the autonomy, correct remit or wherewithal to move innovation outside their department because at that point it requires so much by-off from other staff, managers, departments, budgets, etc. that it becomes impossible to solicit sufficient support to generate momentum for innovation.
Workload/Shirkload – most are are so tied-up in meeting immediate goals that there is little or no time to innovate. In particular people’s performance is most often judged on how they meet those short term goals. Worse, commitments are made and activity joins the bottom of a long the list, then heroic last minute efforts are recorded.
Myopic vision/Limited Planning – Since most are evaluated on how we meet standard goals it is often hard to generate enthusiasm in coworkers for innovative ideas because 1.) they fail to see how it will benefit them personally and 2.) in truth innovation invokes changes, which by definition, requires extra work to implement new procedures and then optimize those changes 3.) skills of individuals aren’t broad enough to make the connections that lead to innovation.
An alternate answer to this interesting question:
Being the barriers to innovation inherent to organisational culture, personality traits, style of management and restrictions imposed for economic downturns, without the aim of being exhaustive, I have identified the following barriers in encouraging both creativity and innovation at the enterprise:
1. A conservative corporate culture that due to its rigid set of values, principles, beliefs and policies has the potential of denying any possibility of being creative to introduce true innovation in the workplace.
2. In contexts predominantly oriented to the operational excellence as happens in enterprises belonging to the industries of manufacturing and Energy, they typically focus on finding streamlined procedures and policies compliance with international quality assurance guidelines, where there is no room to innovate by applying a creative mindset.
3. Micromanagement practices where the willingness to innovate, being a creative and communicative professional is systematically denied, when many managers exert over their subordinates micromanagement practices where the proliferation of excessive controls, lack of freedom to innovate and restricted communication flow are detrimental for the self-esteem and engagement of the affected employees.
4. In many companies where I have worked, the only innovation that is exceptionally fostered, sponsored and supported by Senior Management is only in cases where a ROI may be easily calculated and where perceived risk is straightforwardly identified. In most cases getting to a clear definition of ROI and Risk is not well resourced killing innovative proposals.
5. The sum of genetic factors, infancy’s history, roles assumed by imitation, and the permissiveness, freedom and openness of corporate culture determinate, that some people are much more successful in applying an innovative mindset at the workplace than others. A leader typically differentiates from managers because of having an assortment of unique personality traits that when are merged with managerial skills, deep knowledge of his/her discipline, professional experience and an outstanding relational capital generates an empowered leader with the willpower of inspiring passionately to workgroups, teams and even entire organizations in pursuing with creativity the goals that an organisation needs to achieve in its route to financial profitability and sustained growth.
6. In many organisations the unfortunate fact of doing a mistake is strongly punished and may be a hindrance in achieving the goal of having from an exciting and successful career development. From this standpoint any initiative of being creative in the workplace is an immense risk that not anyone can afford by assuming the role of being an innovator beyond of his/her own comfort zone.
7. It is a commonplace that in certain organisations the potential of a professional of being creative might face the risk of languishing progressively, when Senior Management is reluctant in recognising those with a clear sense of opportunity, in rewarding competitively and in celebrating those creative ideas and initiatives that lead to introduce innovation in corporate processes, its products and services.
Talking with my college and mention Mike, he claims the following:
- As the organisations go bigger and more and more people are hired without planning in order for certain management tiers to prove their own existence that leads to total inefficiencies within departments
- Interdepartmental domains which eventually start hurting the organisation internally
- Cross Organisation hiring and lack of training within existing management tiers
- The total decay of employee confidence by unsecured supervisors
- Non Clarity and dilution of organisational objectives
- Personal Survival at top management.
From a functional view, in an organisation which lacks a broad innovation culture and lacks discipline in change/innovation, the two biggest barriers to change are:
- Accountancy: The bean counters say it will cost too much and/or that the customer will not pay the incremental price.
- Engineering: The mechanics are simply resistant to any re-engineering of the process and/or say the change would be too disruptive and/or too costly.
I have seen these feeble excuses trotted out time and again in various industries, especially the auto sector.
These two professions are often not customer focused or maintain a customer dialogue and yet the successful teams time and time again are able to engage an use the real skills these two functions possess.
The most striking barrier I see is not so much the lack of innovative ideas but the lack of appreciation by both innovator and the organisation of the degree of support required to turn ideas into a reality – it is hard work from everybody’s perspective.
If both are not prepared to invest the time, process and resources let alone fragile egos when the majority of such initiatives fail then the innovation pipeline soon dries up and competitive advantage flounders.
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