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Organizations both large and small understand that innovation — and innovation consulting — is essential to unlocking uncharted possibilities and delivering opportunities for accelerating growth.

Recently, we discussed The Four Pillars of Innovation for Sustaining — and Creating — Growth, especially as they relate to tempering the needs of an organization today with the aspirations and vision of tomorrow.

And while those four pillars are critical for realizing the potential offered by innovation, leaders must be particularly mindful of the inherent barriers and forces that, if left unchecked, will obstruct and undermine their best efforts.

Identifying The Barriers

First, let’s spotlight what the obstacles are, and then we’ll define how they seek to thwart innovation. They are:

  • Corporate Gravity
  • Corporate Immune System
  • Corporate Myopia

And, before dissecting each force in detail, it’s important to establish a few universal truths.

First, these forces are present in every organization, albeit in varying degrees. Regardless of how robust your management mandate or proprietary process may be, corporate gravity, corporate immune system, and corporate myopia — on their own or working interdependently — can zap the thrust from your innovation engine. And while each of these systems can actually be quite useful for the sake of maintaining the status quo, they are highly destructive when innovation is the intended goal.

Innovating the Solutions

In a series of discussions, we’ll explore how these forces often work in unison to exploit fatal flaws in your innovation plan. After all, if innovation is all about uncovering new and novel ways to create value — in both product and process driven capacities — getting your ideas off the ground is the critical first step, right?

In our next post, we’ll spotlight how corporate gravity works to keep big ideas grounded, and how you can cut the wires to let your plans take flight.