Innovator’s dilemmas: are organizational antibodies good or bad?
“Why can’t companies kill projects that are clearly doomed? (…) the failures I’ve examined resulted, ironically, from a fervent and widespread belief among managers in the inevitability of their projects’ ultimate success. This sentiment typically originates, naturally enough, with a project’s champion; it then spreads throughout the organization, often to the highest levels, reinforcing itself each step of the way. The result is what I call collective belief, and it can lead an otherwise rational organization into some very irrational behavior.”
Read Isabelle Royer’s article, “When Bad Ideas Won’t Die“, on Harvard’s Working Knowledge.
“Exert strong leadership on the innovation strategy and portfolio decisions; integrate innovation into the company’s basic business mentality; align the amount and type of innovation to the company’s business; manage the natural tension between creativity and value capture; neutralize organizational “antibodies”; recognize that the basic unit of innovation is a network that includes people and knowledge both inside and outside the organization; and create the right metrics and rewards for innovation.”
Read Sean Silverthorne’s review of “Making Innovation Work.”
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I just finished reading a couple of articles talking about the negative impact of “organizational antibodies”. This term relates to people as well as corporate behaviors and policies hampering innovation. However, I’m not sure this medical metaphor works. Antibodies happen to be key to our immune system by helping us tackle bacteria and viruses. Based on that fact, metaphorically speaking, one would think that organizational antibodies might not be such a bad thing.
I would suggest reading the above two quotes one more time. It seems to me that the first one questions the role of yespeople and the lack of organizational antibodies. The second one makes a point about neutralizing naysayers to be able to make progress. This shows two extremes of a continuum. Innovators need to aware of the reality of their projects and organizations to drive a project to completion. The same applies to figuring out when to exit a project and to move to the next thing.
| J. de Francisco |  |
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| Chicago, IL. 30 June 08 |  |
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