5 Barriers to Innovation

Paul has run a plethora of projects in multiple industries throughout his 20-year career, ranging from process improvement to agile to most recently cyber-security. Paul is also a reputable speaker, drawing practical and humorous conclusions from the "trenches" of his employers. Paul's dedication as a PM practitioner started decades ago, when he became one of the first 10,000 people to earn the PMP.

 

I wish I had a dollar for every company that has “innovation” as one of its strategic objectives. In this highly competitive, global economy we all dwell in today, innovation is a “must have.” The company that does not do a good job of understanding its market and applying its core competencies to that market is headed for failure. The market is dynamic, fast paced and ever changing, and therefore companies must always be adjusting and re-thinking their core competencies just to stay in the game.

Moreover, innovation has become an unspoken part of everyone’s job. In the past, there were suggestion boxes on cafeteria walls. Focus groups with employees occurred once every few years, and were generally initiated only when a new CEO was hired. The last employee focus group I participated in was in 1989! We had to come up with better ways to foster collaboration among call center employees who were isolated in cubes with high partitions. One suggestion was to install rounded supermarket mirrors on the ceiling so we could all see each other!

We don’t see such mirrors in supermarkets today, and likewise the practice of gathering of ideas in an employee group setting seems to be fading away. Today, innovation is expected to be part of everybody’s job. It’s often a strategic value that propagates down to every manager’s and …

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