Daily Inspiration: Mastering Innovation – “World class innovators focus on long term wins through constant incremental improvements”

“World class innovators focus on long term wins through constant incremental improvements” – Futurist Jim Carroll

Futurist Jim Carroll is running his Daily Inspiration series for March 11/18 on the theme of “What is it that World Class Innovators Do That Others Don’t Do?” The leadership ideas are based on an original keynote he gave early in 2009 after a client asked him to identify these issues. He developed this carefully curated list based on 15 years of observations of how his global clients responded to fast-paced change. 

Want something boring? This is it! It’s the BIG impact of the new SMALL incrementalism!

Huh what?

It involves thinking like this: “How can we continue to evolve our solutions in small ways that provide regular, continuous improvement for our customers?” And a realization that success can come from pursuing a mindset that success can be a cumulative process with these key attributes:

• Small steps add up: a growing recognition that you don’t always need the BIG wins – but instead, a realization that many small wins can be bigger!
• The new incrementalism: an innovation mindset that knows that a regular series of incremental improvements can be better than a big leap forward!
• Continuous small innovation: knowing that small ideas can be BIG ideas when they are grouped for cumulative improvements – think small, act often!
• Chasing new methodologies: not all innovation involves new revenue and products – it can come from finding all the new ideas on how to do old things!

This is a trend I noticed while researching my World Class Innovators list, and I certainly found several concepts that fit into the box I was building:

For example, in the utility industry, there was (and is) a growing realization that they didn’t just have to focus on building new power facilities – they could see significant returns by fixing what they have in place.

• T7% of power on transmission and distribution lines is lost as heat
• reduce loss by 10% – would equal all the new wind power installed in the US in 2006
• (or three new coal-fired power plants)
• if the US system were just 5% more efficient, that’s the same as reducing the fuel and greenhouse emissions from 53 million cars

The same type of thinking was happening in the energy sector:

• the typical oil field recovers only 35% of what is available – that’s only 1 out of 3 barrels of oil!
• the balance too difficult or too expensive
• yet new thermal, chemical, or gas injection techniques allow 20-30 billion barrels for every 1% increase in recovery methodology
• result? An example is Shell’s Schoonebeek (Netherlands) field where only 18% was recovered; now focusing on reopening, and up to 14,000 barrels a day

In the auto industry, due to environmental and political concerns, there was a new focus on incrementalism as a pathway to innovation.

• today’s typical automotive system uses only 25% of the energy in the tank — the balance is lost to waste, heat, inefficiency
• ‘I don’t believe there are big step changes, but the incremental biting-off of small percentages.”

And then there was a growing recognition that new trends involving green energy and other ideas would lead to incremental improvements:

• “We produce now 40% more material as a global company than we did in 1990 on the same amount of energy….:” Dupont

This might not seem like terribly exciting stuff – after all, when people are focused on innovation, they are often thinking about the BIG ideas, the BIG inventions, the BIG initiatives, the BIG thinking. And yet, at the same time, there can be a lot of innovation to be found in thinking incrementally, achieving small wins, and taking small steps that add up to BIG returns.

That’s what I found that world-class innovators were often focused on, and so it made its way onto my list of “What World Class Innovators Do That Others Don’t Do.”

There might be some powerful thinking for you here: what are the small incremental steps that you might start taking today that will start you on your larger voyage to a BIGGER future?