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Innovator Report |
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FREE valuable information for executives who view innovation as an important source of sustainable competitive advantage ($14.95 value).
“The Ten Barriers to Innovation That Exist In Almost Every Company”
Learn the straight scoop about the realities of corporate innovation from a senior executive who also has years of experience as a successful innovator.
Wednesday 3:14 PM
Dear Business Executive:
My name is Carlos de la Huerga and I’m probably a lot like you in that I’ve spent a good portion of my career as a corporate executive.
What might make me different, however, is that I’ve also spent years as a prolific innovator – having originated scores of profitable ideas for my corporate employers and, over the last several years, for my own innovation firm.
Therefore, on one hand I’m an engineer who’s incredibly cynical about every management technique ever devised to stimulate innovation. But, I’m also a corporate executive who understands the critical necessity of innovation and the need to get as much of it as possible out of company employees.
As a result, I believe I have some unique insight into the realities of corporate innovation, which I’ve tried to capture in the FREE report available via this website.
Unless you’ve discovered a source of information about the innovation process that has escaped me, I think you’ll find my sixteen page report . some of the most valuable reading available on this critically important topic.
So why another report on innovation?
If you’re like most of the executives I interact with, you’ve probably read your fill about innovation.
Over the last several years (since the Internet meltdown), we’ve all been inundated with articles, books, and seminars on this topic. Then, recently we had to read in every business publication on the planet that the grand masters of corporate management – General Electric – have adopted innovation as their next driver for success (replacing the now widely practiced Six Sigma methodology).
In my opinion, the almost fanatical attention on innovation has been a bit much.
So, why would I write this report?
Well, the primary reason is that most of what I’ve read and heard about innovation over the last several years has been a lot of mumbo jumbo. Truthfully, I haven’t seen anything that I thought was particularly useful.
The other reason is that I genuinely believe I have some extremely valuable information to share about innovation that doesn’t otherwise exist.
How can I be so harsh about what’s available and so confident in the value of the information I have to share?
Let me tell you a bit more about my background
With a degree in theoretical math, I joined a small medical electronics firm more 30 years ago – and then helped grow that company from $3 million in sales to over $500 million. During my time there, I moved from software engineer to vice-president of engineering for the entire company and then to general manager for the company’s most profitable division.
In other words, I spent a bunch of years as a corporate executive.
But, the company with which I worked wasn’t your traditional company. As a result of the way we operated and managed our people, we were widely recognized – throughout the world – as the most innovative company in our market. In fact, even General Electric recognized our innovation by acquiring the company at a healthy premium in the late 1990s.
Since leaving this company, I’ve had a much different experience. Rather than continue in a corporate environment, I decided to return to my pure innovation roots – so I founded Telaric Ideas in 1999.
Telaric Ideas is an innovation and intellectual property firm where I split my time between working on our own innovations and consulting with other companies in the areas of innovation, intellectual property strategy and product design.
As a result of our own innovation efforts , we’ve had over 25 patents issued (with many more pending), founded four companies, raised millions of dollars of external financing, negotiated multiple patent license agreements and settled a multi-million dollar patent infringement lawsuit against a Fortune 100 company. We’ve also developed two software tools that automate many of the patent-related tasks that make the process of prior art searching and patent writing so terribly inefficient and prone to error.
And we accomplished all that in just half our time.
The balance of our work is spent helping companies increase their innovation level, strengthen their intellectual property protection, and lower their innovation costs. Our goal with these services is to increase the return on our client’s innovation investment while decreasing their risk.
Have you ever met anyone with such a background?
I doubt it – and that’s why I said I was pretty darn unique. I just haven’t met anyone else who has spent years as a successful innovator and the equivalent number of years as an executive manager of innovators.
My unique background gives me a much different perspective on innovation
I said above that most of what I’ve read and heard about innovation over the last several years has been a lot of mumbo jumbo. And I believe I have some valuable information to share about innovation that doesn’t otherwise exist.
Truthfully, it drives me crazy to see all these innovation consulting hotshots talk about how to increase innovation when they’ve never innovated anything in their lives. They go on and on about 3M’s Post It Note when they have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA about how an innovation like this actually occurs in real life.
Instead, they do a few interviews and surveys of corporate executives and think they have the answer to corporate innovation. In reality – from what I’ve seen – they aren’t even close to offering solutions that have any hope of increasing a company’s innovation level.
In fact, I’m not actually sure that I have the complete answer. This innovation stuff is very fragile.
But I do believe I have some information to share that adds real value to the body of knowledge on innovation. And, in my experience, applying this information to almost any business will take their level of innovation to a new threshold.
The innovation consulting hotshots do get one thing right
One thing the innovation experts do get right is their belief that innovation is any company’s only true source of sustainable competitive advantage.
Here are some points for which there seems to be almost universal agreement:
· Economies of scale, higher efficiency, lower costs, high quality, streamlined manufacturing, re-engineered processes and fast product development are no longer sources of competitive advantage. In fact, unless you’ve kept up with global competition, these areas of your company might actually be a source of competitive disadvantage.
· Innovation is the only way to create a new market that didn’t exist before (disposable diapers, personal ink jet printers) or radically alter a market that is splintered among several solutions (the Post-It-Note® which took on tape, staples, and paper clips).
· Price cuts might create a temporary bump in revenues – but, in today’s global marketplace, there’s always someone who’s willing to undercut you on price and who probably has the cost structure to do so profitably.
· Companies who are consistently innovative have substantially higher revenues, earnings, profit margins and shareholder value than their less innovative competitors.
· A high level of innovation within a company is one of the most important (if not THE most important) factors for attracting and retaining the highest quality employees.
· Customers really do want innovation.
The ten barriers to innovation
Innovation is obviously pretty darn important – so why aren’t most companies happy with their performance in this area?
Companies have been able to manage the other aspects of their business pretty effectively. Why haven’t they been able to do the same with innovation?
Well, in my opinion, it is due to the almost universal presence of ten barriers to innovation.
In my experience, innovation is a very natural phenomenon. If it is allowed to occur, it will. But, as I said above, innovation is very fragile – so any barriers to innovation that exist, no matter how small, can be quite damaging to its natural occurrence.
But, I’m not talking about small barriers in my list of ten.
Nope, the ones I’ve identified are the Big Boys – the barriers that are absolutely devastating to the existence of innovation and that, sadly, are present at some level in almost every company.
In fact, after reading through the report, I’m guessing you’ll find some familiarity with much of what I cover.
Thanks for your interest in my report. I wish you great success in your future efforts to enhance the level of innovation within your company.
Best Regards,
Carlos de la Huerga
P.S. I truly believe that my Innovator Report is the most valuable 16 pages available on the topic of the innovation. Therefore, I really encourage you to get your free copy.
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