The secret to innovation is not in the idea, but in how you execute it

Innovation is more than a fancy term. It is the reason why one company is more successful than another. Look at the meteoric growth of the Chinese car market spurred by electrification, while classic brands are having a pretty hard time with this switch. We often have a misunderstanding of innovation. In essence, it’s not about the amount of knowledge and ideas you have, it’s about how you systematically implement the right ideas.

Merely working with new technology is not in itself innovation. If you want to create added value, such a change must also be business model-driven. Specifically, as a company, you can innovate in two ways. On the one hand, there is exploitation, or innovation from the operational side. Here the focus is on efficiency and short-term results, without compromising the stability of the business. This is important to remain cuncompetitive and provide customers with reliable services. Call it “playing not to lose.

On the other hand, there is the experimental component – innovation that is more transformative and architectural. Here, a culture of being allowed to fail is very important. After all, in nine cases out of ten, you’re not going to be successful (right away). This is a quick process and a crucial part of an innovative organization that wants to “play to win. Yet in the end, it will not be the most efficient or the most innovative organization that prevails. Rather, it will be the organization that best embraces the duality of innovation – exploitation and experimentation.

‘Ambidextrous’ organizations

In other words, successful organizations are “ambidextrous. They manage to deliver their services efficiently, but also have the teams, expertise and time to try innovative things flexibly. A good example of such a company is Amazon. On the one hand, Amazon excels at delivering goods that customers purchase online, but at the same time the company has also built a strong cloud service with AWS (Amazon Web Services). Such projects often end up in separate companies. If they fail, they immediately disappear from the scene. But if an idea is successful, it will scale up as quickly as possible to capture the market.

A strong strategy must be embedded at the core of innovation

Frederik De Breuck, Head of Innovation and Technology Office Fujitsu BeNeLux

So it is essential to bring both approaches together. This is why McKinsey’s well-known model of the three horizons is out of date. To summarize, horizon one is about sustaining the core business today; horizon two explores new opportunities for tomorrow that are still closely aligned with today’s business; and horizon three focuses on innovation that can transform the business in the future. Where McKinsey plots value against time, today we should rather look at the impact we create. Time is just one part of that. Think of companies that are getting started with Generative AI and other new technology and already scoring impact in their business with this in the short term.

Where do things usually go wrong?

At the core of innovation, a strong strategy must be embedded. Afterwards, the culture must also follow to engage people and change the mindset. And finally, you must also make a good distinction between exploitation and experimentation. For example, you shouldn’t judge the experimental piece of innovation based on the same business metrics you use in operational activities. That’s where things often go wrong in companies. They lack the right use cases and top-down support because managers expect all innovation to be profitable tomorrow.

Perhaps the biggest stumbling block is convincing the community. After all, people don’t like change. Every organization needs drivers who do believe in change and are open to experimenting. If they fall away, it will be impossible to change the mindset in the rest of the company. So companies need to give people a voice so they have room to vocalize ideas. Open communication and education of employees as well as management are crucial elements to bring about a change in mindset.

Perhaps the biggest stumbling block is convincing the community. After all, people don’t like change.

Frederik De Breuck, Head of Innovation and Technology Office Fujitsu BeNeLux

Finally, of course, it must not stop at ideas and experiments. There must also be a handover to teams that can scale up innovation and take it to market. That, too, is something many companies struggle with. In that case, they fail not because they were not innovative, but because they are simply not ready for innovation.

Do not think outside the box

So what can companies do to be successful with innovation? Start by defining use cases and identify where the jammers are that get in the way of innovation. Above all, do not view innovation as the collection of ideas, but realize that it is a process. Knowledge and ideas are not the reason why organizations are unique and successful today, but the fact that they manage to effectively realize and scale the best ideas.

You don’t have to do that alone, by the way. Feel free to engage partners in your ecosystem. No one can solve a problem alone. Today, a company that provides IT infrastructure is not just a supplier of hardware, but a consultant to fit that technology into the customer’s business model and ensure that a solution has real impact.

Finally, we can summarize an innovative mindset as follows: stop thinking outside the box; throw the box away and think again. Those looking for innovative solutions should distance themselves as much as possible from the context. If you are thinking outside the box, you are still too close to it. Once you want to implement an idea, you have to get back on your feet. But getting people to lift their feet off the ground for a moment remains the biggest challenge.


This is a contributed post by Frederik De Breuck, Head of Innovation and Technology Office Fujitsu BeNeLux. For more information about Fujitsu’s services, please visit here.