by Michael Arbow MBA
Partner, RSD Solutions Inc.
Recently my colleague Rick Nason wrote a blog entitled “Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups”. In it he talked about how in television commercials the accidental mash-up of chocolate and peanut butter leading to a wonderful new thought or idea – an ah-ha moment. Last month I had such an ah-ha moment while attending a CEO breakfast hosted by the Carlisle Institute, an economic think tank in New Brunswick. Allow me to set the stage. A day before the event I read on twitter that the most common word used on LinkedIn to self-describe individuals is “Innovative”. The following day I sat in a room filled with CEO types and their groupies (accountants, lawyers and politicians) and the discussion revolved around Canada’s poor productivity. The solution was clear according to the speakers and agreed unanimously by those in the room; we need to become an innovative nation. And to enhance or encourage innovative according to the speakers, you needed more money to be allocated to research by the private and public sectors.
So what was my ah-ha moment that I realize by this mash-up of instances? First, innovation is not unique and second, it is cloneable. In other words there is a template for it: which unfortunately for Canada, the rest of the world also knows this and uses it. I agree that innovation can take you a long way (Japan’s televisions, Finland’s cell phones) but that doesn’t make you win in the long run or stand out from the crowd. To win you must be creative and for that there is no template.
So what does this mean for senior management looking at corporate risk management? There are plenty of innovative risk strategies out there in the form of more sophisticated algorithms, software and flowcharts but these templates do not differentiate you from the herd rather they make you part of it. Alternatively, creative risk strategies are adaptive, and tailored. A creative risk strategy is rare which by definition makes it unique and thus helps your firm raise about the herd.
No comments:
Post a Comment