Did the Ancients Innovate More Than Us?

I have often found myself fascinated and amazed by the buildings, fortifications, and engineering works created by our ancestors, wondering how they managed to construct such feats without the technology we have at our disposal today. Similar questions came to mind after a recent visit to Matera and its famous Sassi—two districts comprised of buildings and rock-cut architecture carved into the stone of the Matera Murgia, inhabited since prehistoric times.

“Matera preserves an ancient water management system consisting of cisterns, wells, and palombari (enormous water cisterns carved into the rock) […].
The uniqueness of the system—the intricate network of open-air and underground channels, and the decantation of the water through interconnected tanks—earned the city its recognition as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1993. This recognition is motivated by an extraordinary urban ecosystem capable of passing down ways of living from the distant prehistoric past of caves to modernity. Furthermore, the Sassi also represent an example of the optimal and sustainable use of natural resources (water, soil, and energy)”. (Fonte: L’ACQUA 3/2016)

The communities that inhabited these places over the centuries innovated continuously, learning to carve into the rock, to build houses, roads, and water collection and management systems to progressively improve their lives.
They did not have the technology we have at our disposal in companies today. They had no innovation managers to coordinate activities and spread the culture of innovation. They had no software to manage these projects. And yet, they were able to innovate.

Why, then, is it so difficult to innovate in a company—and particularly to achieve high-impact innovation?

High-impact innovation is a “game” of research and exploration. It is a balancing act between different needs: the need to respect corporate processes and organization—built to manage the current business—and the search for the autonomy, flexibility, and speed required to develop innovations.
It is also a balance between the human need to operate in a familiar environment and the need to navigate the uncertainty tied to exploring new customers or new ways to meet their needs.

This is why it is very difficult for single individuals (read: “Innovation Managers”) or single departments (read: “Marketing or R&D”) to consistently generate high-impact innovations. It is much more likely that their efforts will be thwarted by the tendency of organizations to preserve the status quo.

To generate high-impact innovation, it is necessary instead to act deeply on three fundamental elements:

1. Individual elements

How do people behave when faced with new problems or challenges?
Do they hide behind beliefs based on their past experience, or are they open to exploring new methods and alternatives?
In many companies, you often hear phrases like “it’s impossible” or “my customers will never want that.”
Under these conditions, innovation is difficult.

A practical suggestion for changing these behaviors is to define the elementary behaviors you want to see applied in the company regarding innovation. For example, instead of saying “be proactive,” it is much more useful to say, “When faced with a problem, bring me at least three alternative solutions.”
In this way, people know exactly which different behavior to put into practice, and above all, it becomes easy to provide positive feedback when the behavior is applied correctly.

By making the expected behaviors explicit and working on feedback, it is possible to change how people face the challenges connected to innovation.

2. Leadership elements

A fundamental element for innovation is the ability to experiment rapidly. Often, however, corporate leadership tends to discourage experimentation, incentivizing instead the safest paths.
While it is true that any innovation—until it is tested on the market—is a set of hypotheses and acts of faith, it is also true that modern lean logic for innovation management pushes for market engagement and experimentation as quickly as possible, to avoid wasting time and resources developing something that holds no value for customers.

Creating an environment where people feel free to experiment is one of the fundamental tasks of those who lead an innovation-driven company.

A concrete suggestion for creating an environment favorable to experimentation is to clearly define the boundaries of autonomy for people in terms of experimentation: how many and what kind of experiments are acceptable, what resources are available for the experimentation and market-testing phases, and which indicators will be used to evaluate the success or failure of a test.

In this way, it is possible to create a company that learns continuously, limiting the risk of justifying hasty design of innovative solutions in the name of experimentation.

3. Process & Governance elements

How do you ensure that ideas generated within the company can evolve into solutions launched on the market?
It is not enough for individuals to do their part by adopting behaviors functional to innovation. Nor is it enough to have enlightened leadership that creates areas of autonomy where people feel safe to experiment.

A practical suggestion for creating effective innovation process and governance is to try answering these questions:

• Who generates innovative ideas?
• Who evaluates innovative ideas? Based on what criteria?
• What are the timelines within which ideas must be developed?
• How can even the most diverse and disruptive ideas be evolved compared to what the company does today?

For innovation to finally materialize in a company, it becomes fundamental to develop an innovation process and a governance system that shows people that their ideas are taken into consideration, developed, tested, and have a real chance of being launched on the market.

It is clear that thinking a person trained in innovation management models or processes can simply “spread the word” in a company does not work.
If you delegate innovation to a single person or department, you cannot be surprised if results do not arrive, despite your efforts and the resources spent…

To innovate, and particularly to achieve high-impact innovation, it is necessary to build the operational steps that different departments or people must take to make innovation happen. All functions must know what is required of them, and when, to ensure that innovation can truly occur.

Too often, innovation courses teach how to be creative, how to think outside the box, and how to stimulate your people’s creativity. But what happens, then, if those who must evaluate the ideas reason as they always have? Or what happens if, during the development of a high-potential innovation, it is gradually “downgraded” to try and “adapt” it to the way things have always been done?