How to Achieve Innovation Through Risk-Taking

How do people acquire and foster high levels of innovation in science, business, and sports?

While everyone is liking for the means to create the “next big thing”, the latest discussions focus on creating the “next big thing” on an ongoing basis. Put another way, making innovation a repeatable and sustainable process.

According to a piece by the New York Times, raw talent and intelligence are a requirement for aspiring super achievers. On the other side of the coin, Malcolm Gladwell’s bestselling book Outliers, champion’s circumstance and hard work over raw ability.

The debate of nature vs. nurture rages on with the single driving idea that innovation rarely occurs by accident, but instead with work, and calculated risk-taking. Organizations need innovation to not only survive, but to thrive. Sustainable Innovation cannot be created with processes and systems alone.

One of the key imperatives of Roberts Rules of Innovation is, No Risk… No Innovation. To increase initiative and innovation, you have to encourage and even embrace failure.

Another key imperative is Ownership. Most would agree that innovation is everyone’s responsibility, but employees can’t innovate unless their leaders empower them to do so.

Innovation needs ownership – a champion within the organization. The champion must convince others to take calculated risks and at times work outside of one’s comfort zone. By combining both imperatives, it does not take long to see that ownership and risk-taking go hand in hand. We’ll explain how to achieve innovation through risk-taking.

Ownership is risk-taking.

In a recent interview by Adam Bryant of the New York Times, Francisco D’Souza, CEO of the information technology company, Cognizant, has the following to say about risk-taking and comfort zones:

“We started Cognizant in 1994, and there was a period early on when I personally knew everyone in the company. Now we have 160,000 employees, and there were several personal and rapid transitions over that time.

The lesson I learned is that when you have to evolve that quickly as a person, you need to be aware of two things. One is personal blind spots and the other is personal comfort zones. Those two things can be real gotchas.

It’s very hard to see your blind spots, by definition, and it’s very easy to fall into comfort zones, because people like patterns and a sense of familiarity. I’ve tried consciously to say, ‘What are the tools I can use to identify these blind spots and push through comfort zones?’ And I always tell myself that if I wake up in the morning and feel comfortable, I’m probably not pushing myself hard enough.”

Companies that remain in their comfort zones for too long sometimes discover that they’ve made a significant mistake. According to the Boston Consulting Group, a culture of risk aversion is the number one barrier to innovation. To avoid swinging between excessive caution and over-exuberance, set a disciplined target for your desired investment outcomes.

Robert’s Rules of Innovation gives 5 simple steps for encouraging initiative and Innovation. Here are a few tips to achieve innovation through risk-taking:

1.   Profiles in Risk: Clearly communicate the risk profile you are asking your people to adopt and state why it is important to the organization’s success.

2.   Failure Management: Never allow an unsuccessful risk to hamper a team member’s opportunities and advancement.

3.   Key Learning Process: Establish a formalized, non-accusatory process for harvesting key learning’s from unsuccessful risks.  Distribute these lessons-learned.

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