Benefits of Taking a Slower Approach to Innovation

Slow innovation strategies are often difficult for organizations to propose, prioritize and fund – it focuses on changes that one sees coming but that may not transform business immediately. Some tips that help fostering a deeper commitment.

Managers tend to focus their innovation efforts on processes that are either large in scale (e.g., new products and business models) or swift in development (e.g., hackathons and emerging platforms). Both approaches can pay huge dividends, but there’s another type of innovation that is more gradual and smaller in scale. We call it slow innovation. Projects that follow this approach can be just as impactful in the long term. However, they are difficult for organizations to propose, prioritize and fund. Their scope and pace often run counter to the rhythms of company goals. And, for those managing the projects, it can be difficult to guide them through circuitous organizational terrain.

Several people have toyed with the phrase “slow innovation” over the years. In our use, we mean to evoke the work of cultural anthropologist Grant McCracken, who distinguishes between “fast culture” and “slow culture.”

Fast culture is the realm of trendspotters and often involves rapid response to a new blip on the radar, leading to a win for companies who can mobilize quickly. This drove not just the meteoric rise of Buzzfeed, but its continual remodeling process.

Slow culture — or, in this case, slow innovation — is the realm of pattern recognition: searching for emerging developments. Slow innovation focuses on changes that you see coming but that may not transform business immediately. It’s understanding, for example, how automation and self-driving cars will slowly but radically transform job markets, and proactively building new strategies to address those changes.

A decision like World Wrestling Entertainment’s move to launch a digital subscription service in 2014 and cannibalize its profitable pay-per-view television business might be seen as a quick reaction to market forces. But the continued success of a seemingly risky move shows that the WWE Network was backed by two decades of watching its audience do things like trade tapes of old matches (and, later, post videos online). The company experimented with different models for engaging its most dedicated fans, so a move that looked like hopping on a bandwagon actually resulted from observation and innovation.

The nature of slow innovation poses challenges, however. While its processes might lead to transformative business endeavors, they are not widely detected by outsiders. And, when the transformation eventually happens, the “slow innovation” work over many years often gets written out of the popular understanding of what happened. That only furthers the gap in investment between innovation that is fast and big, and projects that start small and build slowly.

Further, since slow innovation projects often tackle issues that are “No. 6 on the priority list,” they aren’t likely to affect business soon, if at all — making it harder to get buy-in from management.

But the biggest challenge may be inspiring colleagues throughout the company to help with slow innovation work. If managers are to be successful in creating a culture of slow innovation, they catalyze the process.

Here are some tips to help you foster a deeper commitment to slow innovation:

Set internal expectations carefully. Ensure that key internal stake holders understand what you’re doing and why. Slow innovation is harder to conceptualize than projects aimed at responding to fast culture.

QClaim your wins. The downside of running a department that creates wins for internal clients is that it’s easy to find yourself unintention-

Qally stripped from the narrative when word spreads about the project. Let other teams feel the ownership of this work. But make sure you get attribution for your part.

Invest in relationship-building internally. Finding important slow culture patterns and translating those discoveries to your teams only work if teams know you, trust you and can see the patterns you’re describing. Running an innovation center like this is only viable if people are motivated to work with you.

QKnow that the best “slow innovation” will happen outside walls. It comes from people at a vantage point better suited to wholly focus

Qon slow culture, whose view isn’t obstructed by shifting corporate priorities and the most recent performance goals. This means following the work of academic groups, nonprofits, startups and other partners.

Keep budgets lean. Slow innovation does not need to be expensive. Start small. Try to encourage experiments that other teams see enough value in to fund. If you incubate an interesting function that starts to grow, move it elsewhere in the operational infrastructure. Invest your long-term budgets in a strong core team, opportunities for education and inspiration, and strategic external partnerships.

QRemember that seeing isn’t observing, and hearing isn’t listening. You need to develop an active process of filtering and synthesizing information, and trying to detect patterns that might emerge.

QFoster serendipity. Dedicate time and energy to finding the unexpected. That may mean bringing internal teams together with external thinkers and moving teams out of their comfort zones.

QSAM FORD is a research affiliate with MIT Comparative Media Studies / Writing. FEDERICO RODRIGUEZ-TARDITI is an innovation consultant.