Breaking Up With Incremental Improvement

Let’s be clear – no one is suggesting that continual improvement isn’t a good thing. However, what deserves some real exploring is whether incremental improvement is killing true innovation within your business. There are a number of reasons this can happen – incremental improvement can feel like “enough” if your business is achieving success; even as opportunity for true innovation abounds. Incremental improvement feels safe, whereas innovation can be scary. And, perhaps worst of all, you are focusing on incremental improvement under the guise of innovation – in other words, you don’t really see the difference.

In any of these instances, it is time to break up with the idea of incremental improvement and accept the fact that today’s market landscape demands true innovation. I recently had a conversation with Dan McClure, systems innovation choreographer at Innovation Ecosystem, which you’ll see soon on the podcast. It was clear in the first few minutes of our talk that Dan isn’t one to shy away from the challenges of true innovation, and he’s created a career from his inclination and passion for it in helping companies embrace real innovation.

“Most organizations are in the habit of working. They have built up a set of systems, they’ve built up a value proposition. They’ve built up a marketplace. That all work together to essentially deliver value to their customers and to their shareholders and to their employees. Everything works,” says Dan. “And for those types of organizations, simply making an incremental change to make things a bit better makes them more profitable, more competitive. Sustains their role in the marketplace. The challenge is, if they need to make a bigger change, let’s say a competitor comes in and offers a radically better proposition, or the fundamental basis for their marketplace disappears, then they can’t make small changes to the way things work, because those won’t be enough.”