Anti-innovation companies

Some companies, such as Google and Apple are all about innovation, and competing with them is hard because they keep moving the goalposts.  This is part of why they make so much money and are so valuable to investors.  In order to get this innovation, you need to actively solicit new ideas from staff, and properly incentivize innovation and ensure that you do not let great ideas slip through the cracks.

We know about these companies, and their stories are not new.  Today's topic is so called "anti-innovation" companies - companies that place so many hurdles in the way of innovation and have so much red tape that getting a new idea through is almost impossible - you need to fortuitously combine the person with the idea, the person with the mandate, the person with the budget, the person with the resources (staff) and the correct phase of the moon, and also accept that the credit will go to some totally unrelated person to get a new idea implemented.  People with innovative ideas unfailingly leave the employ of these companies after a while, completely disillusioned and disheartened, having accomplished nothing.  Sometimes they will eventually see their idea implemented a decade or so later, when everyone else is doing it, and bestowing no competitive advantage whatsoever to their original company (and of course, no credit to the originator).

Examples are of course governments, big banks and insurance companies, and probably a large percentage of companies where there are more than 10 000 employees and the average employee has worked for the same company for more than 5 years - i.e. a large bureaucracy and stagnating, trapped employees.  Promotions are only available when your immediate supervisor retires or dies (or sometimes gets promoted himself).  The position tends to go to the person with the longest service, not the most qualified.

These anti-innovation companies are also big customers of managing consultants (McKinsey, Accenture), big audit firms and research firms.  They spend millions on these firms to tell them what their employees have been telling them for years.  Sometimes they even read the final report they have spent millions on.

If you recognize your employer, and like to innovate, leave.  If you like a steady paycheck and get your stimulation elsewhere, chill.  Whatever you do, do not buy shares in this company, and if you have, sell them.  You can do better elsewhere.  They may not go out of business, but they will also never shoot out the lights.

And so things will remain, until one day, Google or Apple (or some other company that innovates) decides that they want a slice of the revenue pie where our anti-innovation company operates - then they are dead in the water and will cease to exist - how long will it be before you replace your bank with Google Money or iBank if they became available?  If an organization with as many inefficiencies and as much bureaucracy as your bank can make money, how long do you think it will be before an innovative company decides to target a share of that revenue? (EBay's Paypal is going into offline payments as we speak).