I saw a Little Caesars TV ad extolling the benefits of the brand’s pizza dough remaining unchanged over time. Perhaps the TV ad is a delayed reaction to a Domino’s TV ad several years earlier about innovating because it finally listened to customers saying how bad Domino’s was.
The Little Caesars TV ad shows one employee questioning another about making pizza dough from scratch every day for fifty years without ever changing. The veteran employee explains the instruction to make pizza dough by hand daily is laminated, and "lamination is forever."
It's a mildly humorous ad.
It's a significant point though when it comes to the barriers to innovation many organizations erect.
While you may not have your organization’s barriers to innovation laminated and on display everywhere, there are likely other phrases, labels, and activities suggesting particular practices are “forever.” Since they AREN’T laminated, they may be easy to miss.
What should you be looking out for with less obvious barriers to innovation? They could be hiding as things talked about or understood to be:
You see, not all barriers to innovation involve lamination as the main way to say something is “forever.” There are all kinds of ways to make it clear that something in your organization is set aside, protected, or untouchable.
Maybe some of them DO need to be forever. A lot of them, however, are probably ripe for change. Be on the lookout and step up to be the one trying to push past all those barriers to innovation and do new and better things. – Mike Brown
Are you prepared to take better advantage of your brand’s customer and market insights to generate innovative product ideas? The right combination of outside perspectives and productive strategic thinking exercises enables your brand to ideate, prioritize, and propel innovative growth.
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