Authors: Scott D. Anthony, Paul Cobban, Natalie Painchaud, Andy Parker
Categories: Disruptive Innovation
Publication Year: 2020

Eat, Sleep, Innovate is a comprehensive guide designed to help organizations make innovation an ingrained, everyday practice. The authors discuss the barriers to creativity and present actionable strategies to overcome them, emphasizing the importance of fostering a culture that encourages continuous innovation. Concrete examples and real-world insights exemplify how companies can put these strategies into practice.

Concept: The innovation code consists of behaviors that characterize innovative organizations: curiosity, customer obsession, collaboration, and adeptness at ambiguity. These behaviors need to be consistently cultivated.

Example: Procter & Gamble’s willingness to embrace curiosity led to its “Connect + Develop” program, which partners externally to source 50% of its innovations.

Action: Encourage curiosity by creating spaces and opportunities for employees to explore new ideas without immediate pressures. Implement ‘idea jams’ or dedicated exploration times.

Concept: The book identifies common barriers to innovation like cognitive biases, fear of failure, and the inertia of established processes.

Example: DBS Bank in Singapore changed its risk-averse culture by creating internal incubators to test new ideas in a less risk-averse environment.

Action: Create ‘safe zones’ or ‘innovation labs’ within the organization where failure is seen as a learning process, not a setback.

Concept: Innovation needs to become habitual. Organizations can achieve this by embedding the desired behaviors into routines and practices.

Example: The company Intuit has “Design for Delight,” a framework that encourages employees to follow a customer-driven innovation process and integrates innovation into their daily work life.

Action: Incorporate innovation behaviors into performance reviews and daily operations to keep them at the forefront. For instance, include metrics for creativity and experimentation in KPI assessments.

Concept: The authors provide a toolkit called BEANs (Behavior Enablers, Artifacts, and Nudges) aimed at fostering an innovative culture through consistent reinforcement of desired behaviors.

Example: The British bank HSBC used BEANs to encourage employees to share customer insights by setting up visual storytelling boards around the office to highlight innovation stories.

Action: Develop and deploy BEANs within the organization. As a start, identify a key behavior to encourage and create simple artifacts like posters or digital dashboards to nudge employees towards it.

Concept: Experimentation should be a continuous process. Organizations must foster a mindset of perpetual testing and learning.

Example: Amazon’s practice of running thousands of experiments yearly exemplifies a robust system of innovation that continuously builds on successes and failures.

Action: Establish an experimentation management platform or process where employees can propose, implement, and track small-scale experiments. Celebrate both successful and failed experiments as learning opportunities.

Concept: Leadership must model the behaviors they wish to see and provide the support infrastructure for innovation.

Example: The leadership at Hikma Pharmaceuticals regularly engages employees in ‘Innovation Days’ where they collaborate openly across departments, demonstrating a top-down commitment to innovation.

Action: Leaders should visibly participate in innovation activities and ensure resources (time, budget, tools) are allocated to creative efforts. Host regular leadership-driven innovation forums.

Concept: Empowerment and inclusive innovation are crucial. Employees at all levels should feel they have a stake in and the capability to contribute to innovation.

Example: At the Danish company Novozymes, employees can volunteer for “innovation sprints,” which allow interdisciplinary groups to rapidly prototype ideas.

Action: Create an open innovation program where employees can pitch ideas and volunteer for innovation projects, providing them with necessary time and resources.

Concept: Effective metrics are needed to gauge progress and adjust strategies. Traditional financial metrics alone are insufficient.

Example: 3M uses metrics like the percentage of sales from new products introduced in the past five years, helping them keep track of and prioritize innovation.

Action: Develop a balanced scorecard for innovation that includes leading indicators like the number of ideas generated or tested, in addition to output metrics like new product revenue.

Concept: After initial success, the challenge becomes scaling innovation practices across the whole organization.

Example: Adobe’s “Kickbox” program equips employees with the tools, resources, and frameworks to innovate independently, scaling the innovation process across the company.

Action: Design and roll out innovation training programs or toolkits (like Adobe Kickbox) across departments to standardize and democratize the innovation process.

The path to embedding innovation within an organization necessitates a deliberate approach, focusing on nurturing the right behaviors and removing barriers. By systematically employing BEANs, building robust experimentation systems, empowering employees, and scaling practices, organizations can catalyze and sustain creative vitality. Leadership’s active participation and the use of effective metrics will anchor this transformation, fostering an environment where creativity and innovation become enduring organizational habits.

Eat, Sleep, Innovate offers a roadmap replete with actionable insights and real-world examples, underscoring that true innovative success hinges on habitual behaviors interwoven into the organizational fabric. By committing to these strategies, companies can unlock and sustain a culture of continuous, pervasive innovation.