A Recession is Still a Time to Innovate

Tim Brown wrote last month that

"There is an Eskimo proverb that says the storm is the time to fish. We are in the middle of a pretty big storm at the moment and organizations are asking questions about how committed they should be to innovation"

The answer to that question is: VERY committed, as some of the comments on his blog suggested. I'd like to add my own folksy quote to the mix:

"I never did fix that hole in my roof. When it's raining, I can't get up there to fix it. When it's not raining, it doesn't leak, so what's the point?"

I'm pretty sure it was my grandfather who said that. Or someone's grandfather, anyway. Chances are it was a grandfather.

The point to take from that is that maybe you SHOULD fix the leak, but the process for doing that will be different in different circumstances. When it's not raining you've got the luxury of time, so you can focus more on the most efficient way to do it, and get the best results. When it IS raining, you're going to need to rig up a tarp or something to work under, and your focus will be on speed rather than the highest quality. If you add those two quotes together, what you get is that it's raining now, and it's time to stick a fish in the hole in the roof. Or something like that.

A recession provides you an opportunity to innovate, for a couple reasons. First, if the workload has dropped, you have time now to try some new things, some ideas you wouldn't have gone with before because the "tried and true" methods were faster and you needed to meet client deadlines. But if the workload is down, then rather than letting employees go you should make use of this time and invest in the future by changing your innovation process and taking advantage of the extra time. You should look at your end product as well: if you're hoping to sell during the recession then you need to develop ideas that will be affordable and practical in a downturn, but if you're saving your ideas for the post-recession upswing, then you can design toward the high end market.

The latter idea requires some confidence on your part that you can hold out during the recession and still be in business when things turn up again. To do that, you're going to need to keep the cashflow going. that leads back to the former idea -- design suitable for a recessionary environment -- which was addressed by Bruce Nussbaum in a blog entry last month. He cites, for example, Amazon's Kindle, which is a well-designed device that's priced appropriately for the recession. Many of your competitors may be laying low until things calm down, so this is your chance to increase your market share by keeping products out there.

So, you should first consider your design objectives: long term or short term? With that in mind, you then need to figure out a design process that takes advantages of the opportunities you have now, meets the challenges, and satisfies your goals. then, look at the product you're aiming for, and make sure it's appropriate for the conditions in which you expect to sell it.

Many firms will go under in this economic downturn. Yours doesn't need to be one of them. With some good planning, a willingness to adapt your innovation process, and an eye on an appropriate product, you can come out of this stronger than before.