UK Diary: Thursday – Ecoconsultancy At Shakespeare’s Globe – Why Innovate?
by Tom Foremski on July 16, 2009 at 7:03 pm
Thursday afternoon the Traveling Geeks are at The Swan, which is attached to the recreation of Shakespeare’s Globe theatre on the Southbank.
The event is organized by Econsultancy , a digital marketing firm, and led by Ashley Friedlein, CEO and Co-Founder (See my photo above.)
There are about a hundred people gathered in a large room. I’m sitting at one of several tables, crowded with people and bottles of water, and we’re talking about innovation.
There are many people from large UK firms at the table, all talking about how they try to encourage innovation within their companies. It’s not easy.
I make several points about innovation. The most important one is that large companies want innovation badly but they can’t innovate. But they want to innovate because there is no end of consultants that tell them they will die if they don’t innovate.
Well, they will die anyway. There is a finite lifespan to large organizations and that’s just the way it is — innovation or not.
An organization is successful because it knows how to monetize a particular business process. Each organization is very bad at changing its culture of monetization. Much better to buy-in the innovation.
Afterwards, I talk with Mathys van Abbe, the founder of Moby Picture, a fast growing Dutch startup (and one of my current favorites.) “Why don’t corporations just concentrate on doing what they do better? They can’t innovate and they don’t need to.” I agree.
