Questioning “VPs of innovation”

Side story: Before I left Microsoft I did a talk titled “How not to be stupid: a guide to critical thinking” and afterwards was was contacted by the director of the Microsoft company values team. This was an internal group I didn’t know existed that was dedicated to, you guessed it, promoting the company’s values (I’m not making this up).

He suggested the talk’s title went against the ideas listed on their internal site, and politely suggested I change the title to “How to be think better” or something less snarky to better reflect the values.

This exchange had the opposite effect: I felt one of the company values was free expression and voicing opinions, and thought immediately of doing the talk again, except with a nastier title, and twice the usual swearing. But perhaps this was just writing on the wall as I left the company a few months later: maybe the values, under my nose, had changed.

Which leads to this post: a conjecture about the value of executives as specialists of innovation.

Hypothesis: if ever a VP of something is created, say a VP of quality or a VP of sarcasm, it means two things:

The company is failing at that activity.
The company will continue to fail at that activity until that VP is no longer needed.

The first point is based on the fact that no innovative company in history, from amazon.com, to Google, to Apple, began with an innovation team. When companies start they are by definition creating new things and inventing ways to solve problems. Innovation in these early efforts isn’t prevented by the lack of a VP in charge of it. Finding new ideas happens simply because people need those new ideas to do their jobs. Just as there’s no VP of breathing, eating or e-mailing, people do these things just fine, as needed, to get through the day.

It’s only when a company has matured to the point where more people are employed to maintain the status quo than to pave new ground that new ideas face sufficient resistance, and the notion of a VP for innovation is even comprehensible. It’s no surprise that the only companies with VP roles focused on innovation are big ones. such as IBM, AMD, CitiGroup, or Proctor & Gamble (P&G).

Common titles include Chief Innovation officers, and VP of Innovation, but these roles rarely have product or even research management responsibilities: their roles are evangalistic. They’re not managing R&D groups, nor directing future thinking teams. Instead they’re supposed to encourage others in the company to be more innovative, by, well, asking nicely? Throwing innovation parties? I don’t really know (but it’s not clear they know either).

Much like my experience with the Microsoft values group, there’s an inevitable paradox in that evangelists can’t help but see themselves as experts in “corporate values” or “innovation” despite the fact it’s not what they’re doing everyday. And I suspect that any hard working product team who receives a phone call from a VP of Innovation, with notes on their project plan, will have a similar response to my interaction with Mr. Values: “Who are you to tell me what innovation is, or how to do it?” Unless the VP of Innovation has a stellar track record of innovating as a manager, or leading innovative projects, how can they possibly be credible to the rest of the company? And even if they’re credible, they can’t possibly have the authority over VPs who actually manage product development.

The only sensible angle for a VP of innovation to take is to dedicate themselves to eliminating the need for their role (Point #2 above). Any large company started somewhere, and started with innovation and new ideas. The VP’s goal then is recovery: to help teams rediscover the environments and attitudes they once had about new ideas, reintroducing risk taking and creative dialog, and then getting out of their way. Their job is to use their executive rank to promote teams that already have healthy systems of innovation in place, and use show others how to learn from them.

VPs of innovation should have expiration dates. When the company returns to a culture where innovation is natural, or at least comprehensible, the need for a VP of innovation has been satisfied and they should quit and end the role. If innovation doesn’t become a natural part of the environment by the expiration date, then that VP can’t say he’s succeeded, as his role in a truly innovative company, wouldn’t ever be necessary.

——————–

What do you think? This is a strawman, so lets see how well it stands up.

Posted Wednesday, December 6th, 2006 at 2:11 pm

in Innovation, Management | 18 Comments » |

Mike - December 6, 2006 at 2:48 pm

Back during the bubble, I worked at one of the ubiquitous dot-coms. At one of our pep rallies/all hands meetings, the CEO made the claim that innovation was one of our “core competencies”. This was before the crash, and was the first reality check that I can consciously recall.

Chris Harbert - December 6, 2006 at 3:07 pm

Generally senior staff members set structure, strategy, culture, and goals. I could see a VP of Innovation being valuable for reminding other senior staff members how their actions will affect the innovation capacity of the organization with respect to the organization’s structure, strategy, culture, and goals.

For example, the senior staff may be thinking about a re-org that would create a vertical organizational structure. The VP of Innovation could “remind” them that horizontal teams tend to be more innovative.

Ensuring that the organization’s culture is conducive to innovation would also be a very important task for the role. Perhaps encouraging the values police to back off would be a good use for this type of exec?

There’s also the shareholder benefit. Creating a VP role for something tells shareholders that your company values it (even if the VP doesn’t really do anything). Look at Yahoo’s latest re-org. They’re probably trying to send a clear message to their shareholders that their company’s values have shifted.

Scott (admin) - December 6, 2006 at 3:16 pm

Mike: It’s so hard to separate the word innovation from just plain old work. What does it even mean for innovation to be a core competency? And besides, every list of core competencies I’ve seen from various corporations not only seems much like others, but are so vague and broad that many activities can be folded inside them.

But you suggest it was a wake-up call – so I have to accept that however innovation was used, it had a positive effect on you.

Scott (admin) - December 6, 2006 at 3:20 pm

Chris:

You wrote “ThereÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s also the shareholder benefit. Creating a VP role for something tells shareholders that your company values it (even if the VP doesnÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t really do anything). Look at YahooÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s latest re-org. TheyÃ¢â‚¬â„¢re probably trying to send a clear message to their shareholders that their companyÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s values have shifted.”

I think this definitely gives shareholders the perception of benefit – what’s easier than taking a top complain from shareholders and creating a highly visible role for it? But that’s far from having any effect on how new ideas are developed inside the company.

You also wrote: “I could see a VP of Innovation being valuable for reminding other senior staff members how their actions will affect the innovation capacity of the organization with respect to the organizationÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s structure, strategy, culture, and goals.”

But why would any competent VP for a product team need to be reminded of their innovation capacity? If the product team has aggressive goals to improve their product, they’ll be doing fine on trying to maximize their ‘innovation’ capacity. And if their goals aren’t aggressive, why isn’t the CEO simply charging his VPs, through aggressive strategy for the corporation as a whole, to be ambitious and take risks?

Look at any company in its innovation prime and you wont find any talk of Innovation VPs, or even the word innovation as a concept: they’re innovating naturally to be competitive and aggressive in making their products better.

James Bullock - December 6, 2006 at 6:09 pm

Does VP guy own doing the work, or supporting the doing of this work among others?

Line jobs are easy. Product Development VP has a herd of resources and develops product. Other people don’t. Simple.

When an organization gets big, and sometimes before that, it can be useful to have someone pushing an agenda across the functional units. I think of “the finance guys” this way, actually. We don’t “do” accounting, most of us, as what our business gets paid for. Nor do we individually get paid, again most of us, to do financial rollups. Yet we do it, and the doing of it is actually spread across the whole organization. Also yet, the doing of it goes to hell without someone giving it some attention because they have that particular monkey on their back.

You’re more entangled with a paradox than finding an error here. Done right, having a “VP Of Something We All Need To Do Some Of” can help us all do some of that. Done wrong, well, you get people trolling for snarky presentation titles, referring to an internal web site as the authoritative source for the company’s values. (And how much does that little incident tell us about the *actual* culture of that organization. At least half a dozen distinct things about authority, communication, roles, values, folklore, and more. Any anthropologists reading this care to take a shot? Here’s a chance to show off.)

I don’t have a problem with “VP of Innovation” to hold the agenda, hold some attention, and even perhaps hold a pot of capabilities and some budget both to be spread among the functional units. They are called staff functions, and while everybody has to pay attention to not wasting money, somebody also has to roll-up the books. The trick with staff functions is that their impact isn’t what we do here, but what “they” do out there, and how we help them do more / better than they would otherwise. Staff functions start going to hell when they become confused into thinking that they are in charge.

When the alleged staff function is the business we are in, or the business we claim to be in, that’s a different problem. So if we’re in the innovation business, but only this slice of the organization rolls up to “VP of Innovation Guy”, well we’re confused about something. But, executives are no more immune to becoming confused than anyone else. So, they screw this up sometimes. And sometimes, perhaps often, the staff folks forget what their role actually is. The real role is a hard one to fill successfully, as Mr. Values VP Guy in your story demonstrated.

Mike - December 7, 2006 at 7:25 am

Scott,

You misunderstand. My reaction was the same as yours, “What does that even mean?” It was a wake up call in the sense that I saw the ludicrous nature of what was going on. The emperor had no clothes, as it were.

andrew - December 7, 2006 at 9:51 am

@James:

You raise interesting points. I infer that the point of your discussion with Scott may be summed up as finding out if organization is applied as a substitute for intelligence.

If it turns out that it is, we may find that larger structures, which naturally tend towards more organization, would as naturally stifle innovation, to which intelligence is crucial.

Unsurprisingly, this is how things prove to be in the real world.

This does not prove that the substitution of intelligence with organization is a necessity on a large scale. Anyway, I’m under the impression that this is what happens.

Am I oversimplifying? Or just opening a can of worms? :-)

Josh Maher - December 7, 2006 at 10:46 am

These large companies need a way for new ideas to be submitted through the ranks to someone or some group that knows what to do with it. This is especially critical when there are a lot of keep the business running employees who don’t have as much opportunity to innovate in their daily jobs.

Another way to look at it is like the person who runs the think week site at MS, or the person in who leads the evangelism of using the 20% time at Google. Once all of these people are busy keeping up status quo and implementing someone else’s ideas their own personal ideas should not be lost, but they should be captured and fostered…and that needs at least one person’s time in a large company….

Kris Vockler - December 8, 2006 at 7:46 pm

Scott, as always I love the way you put things into perspective. My thought and view on this is that as a company grows, sadly it doesn’t retain that which started it and I doubt one could figure out how to keep it just like it was at the launch day. At the start of a company, you are right on target, it’s started because of a problem to solve or an idea to sell, innovation isn’t hard at that point because what you start with is innovative or it just won’t fly. But as you grow, it’s not just a core group of people or one person it’s now a group of people and no matter what we do we need to hire a manager to take care of the different parts; innovation, R&D, HR, etc. Innovation is just one of those odd concepts that everyone feels they can sustain and just keep cranking out the new stuff (ok, Steve Jobs accepted), it’s not that easy, there were stars in alignment and a stiff breeze the first time you rolled out that innovative product, now, when you get bigger it’s like aiming for the point on shore with your boat and having hope for the best you keep in a straight line.

But, I do believe that when a group of people all shares the same values and vision then innovations just happens, more like you have more eyes on the opportunities of innovation. It’s no different than how an entrepreneur is able to see opportunities most people can’t.

That’s the secret right there! A company grows and the entrepreneur becomes removed from the company, entrepreneurs have an ability to see opportunity.

Maybe on something there.

Kris

Maybe most businesses out there just try to hard.

Timothy Johnson - December 15, 2006 at 9:56 am

Two points, Scott:

1. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Based on this, I would agree with your premise that most companies create an accountable position for an area of failure. A VP of Innovation…? That’s just scary from a left-brain-right-brain perspective… after all, manage from the left; lead from the right. It sounds like this position is set up for failure. (P.S. I’m sure you see the same thing with the Chief Project Officer position.)

2. It should be every professional’s goal to make himself or herself obsolete, regardless of role and skillset. If we are not, we are failing ourselves and our organizations. As a consultant, I prefer shorter engagements as they do not allow me the temptation to “burrow in” and become comfortably parasitic. However, many consultants (and FTEs, for that matter) do not share that mindset. And we wonder why we are not good at innovation…

Great post and good food for thought.

Katie - December 16, 2006 at 4:14 pm

I’ve studied innovation for several years and have been working for several months with a creativity guru. From that experience, I can say that many times a large company needs a Chief Innovation Officer or VP of Innovation to actually make innovation happen.

There are so many companies who have paid tens of thousands of dollars for my employer to come in to give a speech, and when we leave, it is obvious that the company will be enthusiastic for a little about innovation, but will never actually use it. They say to their employees: be creative. But they never make it a requirement and their employees are so busy with other things that the innovation never happens.

A Chief Innovation Officer, when done correctly, should set up a “Creative Hit-List” of all the things that need innovative thinking within the company. It is the officer’s job to let employees know where innovative thinking is needed, to provide them with tools (yes, tools do exist, email me if you have questions) to help the employees be creative, and to also listen to and act on good ideas. A Chief Innovation Officer should be proactive in making employees think, not just waiting for their ideas.

Nor should the officer just think of ideas herself. The goal is to enhance innovation within the company, not have only one innovative employee.

From my observations and that of my employer, a Chief Innovation Officer (or the equivalent) is necessary to make sure that innovation is done within the company. Most companies say they want to be creative, but don’t actually do anything to achieve that goal.

An effective Chief Innovation Officer needs to focus on bringing innovation into the company, and then keeping it there. This is not a one-time thing. It must be ongoing.

Jeff De Cagna - December 17, 2006 at 8:58 pm

Scott, I wholeheartedly agree with your two essential points. The role of the VP of Innovation is to create a favorable context and an internal capability for innovation. It is not his or her job to tell others how to innovate, but to learn with them the best way to make innovation sustainable, to provide support when necessary and to remove barriers.

I also agree that an expiration date on the VP of Innovation role is a useful idea, but it should be set only after the role is occupied for at least one year. I don’t think you want to make someone a lame duck out of the gate. Instead, you give your person a year to make an assessment of what’s happening in the organization and what is required to move forward. From there, I think no more than a two-year window to create something sustainable. After that, the position is phased out in favor of collective stewardship by non-executive staff through an innovation council or community of practice.

Scott, on another note, I’ve been trying to reach you to find out more about the book and whether we might do an interview for my blog. Can we touch base at some point? You have my e-mail address as part of my blog post. I look forward to hearing from you.

Scott (admin) - December 21, 2006 at 3:25 pm

Wow – you guys are smart. What are you doing here?

James: Points taken. To show my cards, I’m cynical of staff roles. It’s so rare I’ve seen them effective and rarely are the best senior staff chosen for those roles, vs. product management roles. But yes – I take your point that there is a purpose and a value. But I wonder if you agree these roles should have self-termination conditions.

Timothy: You’re right – the work yourself out of a job idea is a side-effect of people who trust their orgs/leaders. It means people are trying to make real progress, not just the convenient kinds.

Jeff: I’ll follow up. Looks like you’re a Giant fan – on that basis alone I’m obligated to chat with you.

EDeFazio - January 6, 2007 at 1:16 pm

At the end of the day if any position is created i.e. “Chief Director/ Evangelist of Technology Innovataion” without :
1) Budget
2) Staff
3) Authority/Responsibility/Accountability

Any grandeous ideas cooked up will never truly be implemented…
Companies often speak of how important innovation is, but rarely take the appropriate steps to implement an innovative company (I think 3M is one of the few exceptions) When it comes right down to it, it’s about “resource allocation” (How much time, money and people are you going to devote to innovating?) Most of talk about innovation within companies is just rhetoric…

BTW Scott, I’d imagine you’ve read “the Innovators Dilemma”, and “The Innovators Solution”… both very good on the topic of Innovation (I also liked “What Customers Want”)

Cheers

ERudd - January 10, 2007 at 8:41 am

There is no blueprint for innovation. If there was, everyone would follow it (by creating a VP of Innovation,etc.) and it would cease to be a competitive advantage. The Innovator’s Dilemma basically says that as soon as a company puts a framework in place that prevents certain types of investment in development, a window of opportunity for the competition is opened. You know where the VP of Innovation really exists? By definition, your competitor is the only one who can staff that role. Think about that.

Heather - January 23, 2007 at 4:09 am

This comment isn’t directly related, but I have become fascinated by what ex-Microsoft people create in the after-life. Here is a link to a video about it from the Microsoft Alumni Network’s After The Holiday Party:

http://pugettown.wordpress.com/2007/01/23/is-there-life-after-microsoft/

maol symbolisch » Chief Culture Officer - May 3, 2007 at 5:03 am

[...] aber meines Erachtens nicht eine, die man an eine CxO delegieren kann, genausowenig wie den Chief Innovation Officer. Wenn man einen CCO braucht, dann ist schon was falsch gelaufen – alles weitere bei Scott Berkuns [...]