Bupa marketing boss John Moore: ‘Innovation departments is where innovation goes to die’
Innovation departments are nothing more than business divisions “where innovation goes to die”, the marketing director of health care fund Bupa has declared.
Earlier this week, Bupa chief marketer John Moore told a conference that once a company creates such a unit, innovation across the rest of the business is strangled.
He added that disruption and innovation “are the same thing” and must be approached with a view to solving a customer problem.
“If we don’t start from that customer problem, we’ve got an issue of bringing innovation to life and making it happen,” he said. “Disruption is just solving a customer problem in a way they didn’t know they wanted. It’s should always be customer led.”
Moore then asked delegates at the CMO Disrupt conference in Sydney how many of them worked in innovation.
“I ask that so I know who I am going to offend,” he said. “Disruption doesn’t happen because you say innovate and it really doesn’t happen if you create an innovation team. An innovation department is the place where innovation goes to die because suddenly staff think ‘I don’t need to innovate because that little team over there will do all the innovation for me.”
In addition, Moore, who said innovation occurs “through customers looking at problems”, urged companies to look externally for ideas.
“If we think we can do all the innovation and bring it to life then we are pretty crazy because….it’s working with partners that will really bring it to life,” he said.
“Fundamentally every solution that is out there, everything that we have bought to life and are trying to do, starts with the customer because they know what they want but they don’t know how they want it.”
Steve Jones
He’s spot on. Most digital projects fail for similar reasons. Forrester published an article saying 65% of digital projects fail. They fail through a lack of ownership but also because the customer gets forgotten as internal power turf wars play out.
Digital innovation requires a cultural change first and that’s a job that requires more than one department. There is a frenzy of investments in stuff at the edge of these big companies but it’s just a distraction to the main game. Just ask the Woolworths CEO.
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Applauding.
True, ground-breaking innovation happens via tinkering… almost always (though not exclusively) by people outside the category/business/field.
And most people (not all, but most) with “innovation” on their business card, have never successfully innovated or made or sold a damn thing.
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Yep, this is spot on. Organisations need to start thinking of innovation as a ‘layer’ and not as a department.
McKinsey refer to it as an ‘Innovation system’ but we’re all talking about the same thing – a culture and a set of processes that encourage customer-centered problem solving and the idea that solutions and great ideas can come from anywhere inside an organisation.
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Its time senior marketing professionals stop with the motherhood statements and hiding behind significant marketing budgets. Innovation is about ideas – regardless of what you call a department. Surely John Moore understands that the concept of ‘disruption’ has been around for ever. He should bring new thinking to the table rather than the drap marketing that Bupa is deliverying before he talks about innovation
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