Why bigger doesn't always lead to smarter

Those of us who thrive on being inspired by and being dedicated to innovation define smart in today's complex world as innovative. Our finest dreams will require nothing less than innovation. The cynics among us believe that there is a direct positive correlation between the size of businesses and their capacity for innovation. The outliers open the door to more hope.

Of all the things we could hold responsible for a big organization's lack of innovation, I would argue that at the top of the list is not innovating how you innovate. Every organization I see that gets continuously smarter is continuously innovating how they go about innovating. They change and experiment with how skunkworks happens, how they engage external talent in global networks, how approvals happen, how intrapreneurship is supported and they help people learn better ways to collaborate in the innovation space.