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By Andrew Hill 摘自《金融时报》
In 2008, Samsung ran a print advertisement picturing a lissome young couple next to a forest road. They have dismounted from their mountain bikes to tend to an injured young deer. Mr Lissome has unfurled a flexible electronic display from the side of his mobile phone and is consulting a website about first aid for fawns. Samsung researchers are “inventing new technologies one could only imagine”, the copy boasts, “so getting real-time interactive first-aid instructions for a wild animal at a moment’s notice becomes a real possibility”.
I cut out the page and stuck it above my desk: a warning of what could happen if innovation were allowed to run amok.
Keeping innovation useful is a constant challenge for big companies, partly because it is so hard to pin down. Asked to pick from four definitions of innovation at London Business School’s Global Leadership Summit last week, 58 per cent of the audience selected the shortest and widest (from The Economist): “fresh thinking that creates value”. But such a broad definition could be applied not only to the technology that may give the world the mobile emergency veterinary information service it has long desired, but also to the service itself, to the way it is conceived, developed and sold, and even to the business model of the company that came up with the idea.
No wonder virtually every business with a public face includes the word “innovation” in its mission statement, making the term as meaningless as “shareholder value” and “sustainability”.
Yet I still agree with the broad view laid out decades ago by management thinker Peter Drucker: that innovation is one of only two basic functions of business (the other being marketing). Without innovation, as George Buckley, chief executive of 3M, pointed out at the LBS conference, most companies would never beat a benchmark growth rate. Yet even Mr Buckley, a hard-headed Yorkshireman running a global manufacturer, says the greatest innovations benefit from a sprinkling of hard-to-define “pixie dust”. Try putting that in a spreadsheet and determining its return on investment.
How to foster innovation is easier than deciding what it is. Academics and executives agree that freedom – including freedom to fail occasionally – is one key to creativity. Small, fexible, diverse groups of workers will generate more ideas than hidebound hierarchies. Managers should encourage staff to talk to each other and share ideas, increasingly with inventive third parties from outside the company.
They should also give reports space and remove barriers between divisions – sometimes literally. A new report out on Tuesday from Microsoft says shared workspaces and open stairwells all help encourage chance encounters that generate fresh ideas. It says GlaxoSmithKline and Philips are examples of “hybrid organisations” that have reaped the benefits.
Finally, innovators need time. Google is known for allowing its engineers “20 per cent time” – one day a week to work on their own projects. 3M has offered its staff “15 per cent time” since 1948 (although, interestingly, it works out more like 5 per cent when staff who decline the offer are taken into account).
Applied loosely, these suggestions would be a licence for laxity. Companies need to focus. Procter & Gamble’s attempt to “systematise” innovation gets star billing in the latest Harvard Business Review. Half its projects now meet profit and revenue targets, up from 15 per cent in 2000. ArcelorMittal, which boasts that innovation “is a mindset”, concentrates its $280m research and development budget on automotive steel, where it can add most value by improving the high-margin products’ ability to compete against carbon-fibre or aluminium alternatives. One of the biggest challenges for chief executives and boards is to know when to kill off developers’ ideas, says Martin Smith, who specialises in technology and innovation at PA Consulting.
That leaves a final problem of how to gauge what is – or will be – a success. Here consensus eludes the experts. Even Drucker framed the appraisal of innovation performance as a series of questions and admitted that it came down to “assessment rather than measurement”.
Which gives us a final, overarching definition of innovation: the throbbing headache the chief executive takes home at the end of the day.
评析：团队的进步源于成员的创造力迸发与团队成员的协同。有价值的创造力是一个有竞争力的企业前进的动力，管理者首先予以成员充分的发挥空间（just like google etc. )，空间应是管理者圈定的方向和期待的创造力可以能够产生的价值。没有方向的创造是失去团队基础的、失去一个团队的单位行动是毫无意义的商业上的浪费、也是对协同原则的亵渎。
领导力（leadership）的美妙在于协调了企业发展方向与个人创造力之间的协调以及个体与个体、集体与外界的沟通。完美的协调是一首漂亮的三部创意曲，各个function逐一进展而不失去整体的协调性。管理者对突出而有利的表现应该予以充分的肯定和奖励；对背离团队前进方向的创造，首先对个人的努力肯定其次纠正和批评其个人相对整体的不和谐，也就是创造力失去了价值。失去价值的创造好比悬空的散文，漫无目的的前进只会拖累整体团队的进度。
优秀的企业家不可以事必亲躬。其玄机在于如何调发出一个人的创造力和企业责任心。团队的前进好比并进的三头马车，CEO处于中间位置，其他部门的前进可以有更快的速度——这可以使其他包括ceo在内的部门更加前进；同时增加每个部门对前进道路的责任心可以显著加快脚下的步伐。创造力和企业责任心可以理解为个体的“迸发力”，如何激发、鼓励、表彰、纠正迸发力是ceo首要concern的核心管理对象之一。
好比对"RoyalTrend"品牌的锻造，商业模式是可以伴随经验的增长和团队实力的增强摸清做透，而在摸清物流过程、营销方式之后，贯彻执行过程中提升最core的一点在于创造力的浸染。品牌的打造过程本身就是独一无二ideas的执行，amazon的成功在于其简便的物流流程和亲善的互动界面；gilt groupe的成功在于渲染尊贵的会员制和借助会员制的推广（暂且我认为这个必须建立在高级白领对网络销售的高度认可和习惯）。同理，任何一家奢侈品品牌的糅杂过程也是一个从小作坊精神到大品牌精神的延续：包括商品制作所代表的品味、销售方式所代表的尊贵、用户人群所代表的独一无二性等等。不能够否认。对于即便是b2c携带网络销售的现代商务，也无法避免核心内容的重复（竞争对手之间物流、销售方式），如何在市场中占有有利地位取决于对品牌logo、slogan等等品牌核心价值的贯彻——这是如何截流固定消费人群、依靠固定圈子扩大销售的关键所在-----任何一家针对中产的企业都不能回避品牌的重要性。而品牌的诞生源于创造力的伟大，一家公司从ceo到一般职员，落实到品牌创造上，必须保持绝对平等性的对话而绝不可以因为公司等级体制限制了个人对品牌理解的提升。
品牌的伟大，离不开创造力的无限扩展。我相信creativity在学术界占据恒久的核心地位；品牌的建设远远超越制造商品获取附加价值、交换货物获取价差并套利等基本商业行为。除了企业生产获取利润的必备因素，品牌建设应该放在首位。毫无疑问，锻造的过程是双向的，公司内部职员对品牌本身的树立；客户对品牌的认可。前者牵扯创造力的执行；后者取决于创造性的营销。品牌的锻造不仅仅是面向客户，同时也应该让团队中每个人感到企业的归属感（品牌的影响力）和共同事业心。我并不试图论证苹果公司比山东邹平西王集团之间在企业成长过程中有什么技术含量的区别，以及公司管理体制的现代性之间的差别（甚至我认为可以直接聘请一位management phd毕业作公司管理顾问，如此公司的体制可以形式上的先进），尽管我很难找到案头上客观文字画的中国大型民营企业的成长经历，试图从接触的公司高管只言片语中思考带来企业成长的核心价值：而我认为是team的品牌输出以及品牌归属。人类是一种社会动物，以家为单位的庇护体是普通人尽力去寻找、履行的。大企业之所以可为“大”，不仅仅是领头羊洞察力、决策方向的正确、极强的社会活动能力等等，十分重要的一点是对“整个公司（品牌）的塑造”，而成功的企业家口中我惊异的发现“我们”的语言频率要远远比普通人多，这不是个人意志的特殊关照，应该是心底里对整个团队的品牌价值塑造努力的客观流露——而这一点成就了企业的强大和品牌的可持续输出能力。从“西王”开始做，把它的客户群从植物油一直拉到房地产，依托的是一个有价值品牌的巨大的影响力。“故善战者，见敌之所长，则知其所短；见敌之所不足，则知其所有余”（《孙膑兵法·奇正》）
“所谓治者，居则有礼，动则有威，进不可当，退不可追，前却有节，左右应麾，虽绝成陈，虽散成行。与之安，与之危，其众可合而不可离，可用而不可疲，投之所往，天下莫当。”（《吴子兵法·治兵》）
2011.8.2 hanluchen 执笔于深夜
旗下有一program在打算做b2c海外代购品牌网站，针对中高级白领阶层的、并用3d全景展示商城。这是我第一个帖子，基于长期对cd的信赖，想通过这个平台寻找合适志同道合的teammate，有志者联系:cgclanjq(A) hotmail.com 或者手机18754320068或者留言。
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发表于 2011-8-2 04:35:09
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