Abstract
A popup is an innovation that is born of frustration. Service agents see things that do not work and ask for improvements, but the company fails to respond. Their answer is to create an innovation to smash the problem. Such innovations may be excellent, or counterproductive, because while they solve a specific problem they might also do greater damage to the organization as a whole. The chapter shows how to resolve this dilemma, as well as introducing the three agents of innovation (innovator, innomanager and innosufferer) and showing concrete ways to implement new ideas. It also depicts a hitherto undiagnosed brainpower syndrome, the “Himalayan syndrome”.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
I do not wish to repeat what my last book said. If readers are interested, please go to Chapter 8 in my book How to Make Things Happen, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.
- 2.
We shall discuss Knowledge Units in the next chapter.
- 3.
Albeit with the best of intentions and in agreement with some Family member or other. But this unilateral approach is not only unsustainable, but very risky. Knowledge is in a few people’s heads; it is not shared around and does not lead to sustainability.
- 4.
The type of napkins they used and how they folded them, the way clients were welcomed in the dining room, check-in details and so on, and so forth.
- 5.
Obviously, by that time the popup was truly enormous.
- 6.
And with much suffering on many sides. Only perseverance and constant work by some has managed to remedy the situation.
- 7.
Prototyping is one activity in the SAS design chain, introduced in the previous chapter.
- 8.
For more details, see Chapter 9 in my book How to Make Things Happen.
- 9.
Rapid prototyping, a design thinking approach. At the core of the implementation process is the prototype, converting ideas into actual services that are then tested, repeated and perfected.
- 10.
Get several practices going that shorten the product development cycle, measure actual progress without resorting to complicated indicators and help to understand what clients really want.
- 11.
And that is this book’s fundamental purpose. I hope that voicing the four companies’ actual SPDM experiences will help to implement them in many others.
- 12.
So-called creeping innovations or, by extension, which arise to fix structured high- or low-variety problems.
- 13.
I must make clear that I do not champion totally structuring/materializing every little innovation, as that can lead to straight-jacketing and deadlock. But they must be spotted and revised periodically to see how much they are used, as well as their value added. That functioning must be adopted structurally and handed to the manager in charge of the project as part of the latter’s daily work. Innovations used sporadically and that have no great impact may well stay put, but they must be known. Those that enhance performance or entail solutions that may have a novel impact on other areas must be analyzed to be industrialized afterwards.
- 14.
Or it would have been minimized.
- 15.
Although they performed a capacity analysis, the mismatch was seen in the consumption and tasks they had; they tried to standardize and cut consumption. Some of them did learn from it and applied the lessons to their duties and the extended enterprise. Others did not.
- 16.
Alludes to believing themselves on top of the world.
- 17.
And they are often right.
- 18.
Remember that only autoritas (the authority somebody has by themselves, regardless of their institutional role in the company) achieves this. Himalayas do not believe in potestas (power invested in somebody due to the position they hold in the company).
- 19.
This Himalaya will be a Himalaya until he retires. But what he does gets results, so a way must be found to fit him in and benefit from his developments.
- 20.
I believe managers that do not want to play should be clear about what their future is. They will find pastures anew.
- 21.
Another Achilles G12 member has devised their own personal version of these SPDM questions. He has paraphrased them by asking: How do you do it? What problems do you come across? What decisions do you make? What limitations do you find for more business?
- 22.
For more on this issue, see Chapter 7 of my book How to Make Things Happen, which is wholly dedicated to managing brainpower.
Bibliography
Brown, T., & Wyatt, J. (2010). Design thinking for social innovation. Standford Innovation Review, Winter, 8(1).
Muñoz-Seca, B. (2017). How to make things happen. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
Ries, E. (2011). The lean startup: How today’s entrepreneurs use continuous innovation to create radically successful businesses. New York: Crown Business, Random House.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Chapter 5: Conceptual Appendix
Chapter 5: Conceptual Appendix
-
I.
Each agent’s role
-
II.
Innovation agents
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Muñoz-Seca, B. (2019). What Shall We Do with the Popups? On-the-Spot Innovation Can Create Unforeseen Problems. In: How to Get Things Right. IESE Business Collection. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14088-5_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14088-5_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-14087-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-14088-5
eBook Packages: Business and ManagementBusiness and Management (R0)