In relation to the Parkway, the question is why the current management has failed to take advantage of the many tremendous innovations being used by other park and related entitles, locally—Sacramento Zoo—and nationally—Central Park—and preserve and protect the Parkway more efficiently and equitably.
Lessons Not Learned About Innovation
Q&A with: Rosabeth Moss Kanter
Published: November 15, 2006 Author: Sean Silverthorne
Every managerial generation rediscovers the need for innovation to drive growth but, decade after decade, "grand declarations about innovation are followed by mediocre execution that produces anemic results, and innovation groups are quietly disbanded in quiet cost-cutting drives." So observes Rosabeth Moss Kanter in a new Harvard Business Review article, "Innovation: The Classic Traps."
Kanter, who holds the Ernest L. Arbuckle Professorship at Harvard Business School, specializing in strategy, innovation, and leadership for change, discusses her ideas on managing innovation and what companies can do to avoid the innovation traps that snare so many.
Sean Silverthorne: Companies and executives seem doomed to repeat the past when it comes to innovation. What are some of these mistakes and why are they repeated each generation?
Rosabeth Moss Kanter: Innovation seems to be rediscovered in each managerial generation (about every six years) as a fundamental way to enable new growth. But each generation seems to have forgotten or never learned the mistakes of the past, so we see classic traps repeated over and over again. Some of these repeat offenders include burying innovation teams under too much bureaucracy, treating the innovators as more valued corporate citizens than those who work in the current business, and hiring leaders who don't have the relationship and communications skills necessary to foster innovation.
Why the refusal to learn from the past? Institutional memories are short. But internal business pressures also play a part as executives balance the need to protect current revenue streams with the imperative to get behind new concepts crucial to future success. And too often executives lack courage—they call for innovation but then pull the plug on every idea brought their way.
