3 ways to innovate.

There are three main ways I focus on in my talks that companies can successfully driveinnovation: through acquisitions, external partnerships, or through internal change. Beforeanything else, a company must make a conscious decision to commit to change. Consideringwhat they’ll do within the organization to stimulate and drive constant change. In a sense,internal change is the first point that most companies will begin innovation. Once that's in placeyou can use one of the three accelerators that I will describe in this chapter. Amazon is a goodexample as they have a culture of innovation and change, then they are deciding onacquisitions like that of Wholefoods, or other partnerships. Successfully using all of the threetypes of innovation interchangeably, probably partnerships are their least favored approach.

You can read about all the success examples in my upcoming book “THE CHANGE”.Meanwhile, it might be a good idea to look at the concept of acquisitions and why they happenin the first place. In some instances, the acquisition of IP, talent, or companies is required toquickly drive innovation. Corporations are bureaucratic with a culture that is less defined byagility, scrappiness, and risk-taking. Which makes it very difficult for them to change quickly.Whereas a start-up is often defined by passion, energy, drive, and motivation. The very DNA ofa start-up is perfect for driving innovation. Which is ideal for the acquiring agency. Although thekey issue that many organizations hit up against when acquiring a company is that they lose theessence of why they wanted to acquire the company in the first place. There are a lot morefailures than successes. Corporation ends up writing off a huge investment because it killedeverything in the acquired entity that was the reason for acquiring it, in the first place.

To recap, the three key ways to drive innovation are:

1. Organ transplant - A.K.A acquisition - Executed properly, this looks like Microsoft’sacquisition of LinkedIn or GitHub.

2. Lifeblood-driven innovation - with external partnerships, welcoming new talent, andnetworking. Lego is the prime example of this.

3. Change from within - Build the gym within the company. Amazon’s approach tochanging from within and how they keep innovating is a good example.

In 9/10 cases you’ll see successful ventures, products and initiatives in a company being a mixof the above 3. Hence the role of employees is to understand how innovation happens atorganizational and individual level and how you, even if you don’t have anything to do with M&A(mergers and acquisitions), or corporate innovation and R&D, can help “land” these ways toinnovate, because you can only belong to 2 camps: change agent, or change inhibitor (immunesystem). Unfortunately, most people fall in the immune system camp, because they follow rulesblindly.