Dilemmas Bring Dramas

In 1997, Clayton Christensen published the book The Innovator’s Dilemma. It is one of the most influencing and important theories of modern business management, and it was the first innovation theory I studied when I shifted from product management to innovation management 15 years ago.

Inspired by Christensen’s and other studies of innovation, I became an enthusiast disrupteneur. I wanted to innovate and disrupt, transform, improve, and when possible revolutionize. Brave new innovated world here I come – I am going to be an innovator.

(First) Conversations about innovation management presented a few challenges, Many did not understand or resonate with the ideas I brought, and those who did had all sorts of approaches and attitudes to the issue of innovation management.

(More) Meetings I held forced me to confront managers who didn’t want to hear about theory, they wanted results, or more accurately, they wanted things they could use immediately.

(Many) Talks I gave, put me in front of many people who wanted to learn and explore, and also in front of people who wanted to check out how others are innovating so they could do the same.

(Lots of) Projects I engaged with, fully demonstrate how little attention there is for innovation and highlighted a challenging reality - the innovators want to create things that people will be thrilled with, but discover they are busy responding to the things nobody wanted to deal with.

As these experiences accumulated, I realized something that changed how I approach innovation and innovation management ultimately – I realized I was more engaged with the delaying aspects of innovations than with the accelerating elements of innovation.

I started feeling something was missing. I needed a simple and organized approach to recognize and overcome unexpected complications and delays. And I needed a lighthouse principle that will allow me to navigate through the innovation challenges.

As I asked myself why innovations get stuck, I soon realized It had more to do with the abundance of inhibitors than with the scarcity of catalysis. Creative people can do a lot with little, but they can't do much against plenty.

I was experiencing the innovator’s drama, and I didn’t even know about it.

As an innovator, I was capable of innovating on my own, but as an innovation manager, I had to orchestrate and run operations that included many others, and those others… well, they didn’t want to transform things with the same enthusiasms as mine.

First came frustration, then came anger and disappointment, and then began a realization. Like me, everyone else deals with their own innovation dramas. But it was my job to organize and respond to all their dramas on top of my own. And I had to do it quickly and effectively if I didn’t want more drama.

I started exploring and observing the types of dramas that occur in an innovation process, and organize a transparent approach to manage these dramas and their impact on the most crucial metric of innovation – adoption.

A multitude and highly contextual adoption challenges are the sources of dramas. And Whether we like it or not, Innovation managers who want to accelerate innovation processes, improve the quality of innovations, and increase their impact, must understand and manage the innovator's drama.

The purpose of this project is to address the following questions and more: What is drama, how is it created, how it affects innovators, and how can innovators respond to it quickly and effectively?

We don’t get disrupted by a dilemma; we get disrupted by the drama of finding the right answers.

To accelerate innovation management, to actively manage disruptions, and to successfully innovate and transform, internally as an organization and externally in markets, we must acknowledge and manage not just the innovations, but also the innovator’s dramas