Stop Blabbing About Innovation and Start Actually Doing It

These days, every established company is at risk of having its industry–and its own business–disrupted by a startup. Cognizant of this, companies devote a lot of time to talking about how important it is to innovate. But here's the truth: most companies can't innovate because everyone is paid to maintain the status quo.

This is the single biggest reason companies fail to do anything new or exciting. You and everyone else are maxed out making sure your company is doing what it's supposed to do; innovation is what the weekends are for.

Despite the real risk involved, this actually makes sense. Companies are set up to do one thing very well. That's the business they're in. All of the roles in the company are defined and structured to create the best environment for doing that one thing as efficiently as possible. The number of people employed by the company fluctuates with the workload. More work, more people. Too many people and too little work means layoffs or mismanagement. Success is doing the same thing you've always done, just a little bit better, achieving just a few more sales or shaving a hair off of costs. Change is discouraged by time constraints and the stifling number of approvals needed. Failure is punishable by pink slip. Every day is the same.

Yet, today, your entire industry can change in the space of a headline. If your business can't innovate, it won't survive when the startup in the garage across town that doesn't have to answer to your shareholders does all the things legal has been telling you that you can't do, all the things that you don't have time for. It's never been more urgent to stop talking about innovation and actually start doing things differently. And, with digital, the opportunities have never been greater. Instead of innovating on your weekends, overcome the structural impediments and time constraints to real change by approaching innovation from two directions: outside-in and inside-out. Read the complete Fast Company blog post to learn more about the essential ingredients for the recipe of innovation.