Who gets the credit?
In 2014 I visited the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley CA. It had an exact replica of his White House office. On the desk was a little sign that read, “There is no limit to what a man can do or where he can go if he doesn’t mind who gets the credit.” There is debate on who said this first, including Charles Edward Montague and others, but the core idea of not hogging the credit has been super valuable to me over the years.
A couple years ago my student Andrew Pei and I ran a survey asking, “Who should get the credit for innovation?” We asked innovation leaders from many corporate functions, including the C-suite, R&D, manufacturing, legal, and others. Most respondents were manufacturing, followed by R&D. For me the results were surprising. The most common responses were these:
R&D. The median was 50% of the credit, and the high end was 80% of the credit.
marketing. The median was 15%, and the high end was 25%.
manufacturing. The median was 15%, and the high end was 40%.
legal, regulatory, commercial. No credit at all. 0%. Zilch. Even the legal respondents said 0%, even after I coaxed one of them after they responded.
sales. Median 5%, high 10%.
C suite. Median 5%, high 25%.
On the low end, all were 0%, except R&D was 12%.
My hypothesis is that if you’ll take a chance and value all parts of the innovation process similarly, that your innovation throughput and value would rise dramatically. And you can start with any of these functions. If www.kpco.us can help, please connect.
