Sledgehammer innovation is what happens when a brilliant idea is paired with the grit of hard labor. “It’s our belief that true innovation takes more than an aha moment, it takes a sledgehammer,” he says.
The solution: sledgehammer innovationįor Cree, an aha moment means nothing unless it’s supported by the culture and backed by a strategy to make something of it.
LIGHT BULB AHA MOMENT HOW TO
It was how to build a better lightbulb that doesn’t rely on 100-year-old technologies, and how to create a bulb radically better than what they were seeing as the flawed LED bulbs flooding the market. In this sense, the true problem for Cree wasn’t how to get the large team to turn on a dime, and it wasn’t even how to create a home consumer product when they had absolutely no experience doing so. Through their singular focus they eventually made the discoveries that led to the forming of Cree, a company up until recently that was known only for providing the components that went inside other companies’ LED products. The company was formed in 1987 when a small team of researchers at North Carolina State University, despite countless people telling them otherwise, believed that silicon carbide had immense potential as a commercially viable material. “That was when I knew I had to get on board.”
“I saw their willingness to completely retool the company if it meant achieving a greater goal,” he says. It’s not that the 6,000 people aren’t vitally critical to your business success, but you have to bite-size those critical first steps and then take the large organization (or otherwise find a way) to reinforce those first steps through mass implementation.”Ĭree’s willingness to do this is what compels employees like Watson to join them in Durham, North Carolina. With such a mindset you realize that sometimes getting 6,000 people on board with a particular idea can get in the way of what matters most. “Our culture believes in spending all of its time, energy, resources, and actual budget money on things that matter,” Watson began. From there it’s all about creating what a great idea needs the most: a talented, driven team who is granted the time and space to focus exclusively on the idea, and a larger multi-faceted strategy to ensure that the results of their focused work can see the light of day.” The problemįor Cree to foster innovation, they had to take a real problem that exists in the world-in their case, that traditional light bulbs are actually better at generating heat than they are at generating light-and then create small teams to take on the challenge.
Innovation begins with the nurturing of a workplace culture that values creativity and gives great ideas a chance to incubate. He believes the term is so frequently thrown around as a buzzword that it’s more often used as a “deceptive marketing condiment.” Watson sees the term as a way of being, and he believes it’s something far more sustainable and replicable than the flash-in-the-pan stroke of brilliance it’s often known as: “Truth is, innovation actually used to mean something,” says Watson. So why was Cree, a multinational manufacturer of semiconductor light-emitting diode (LED) materials that was founded back in 1987, named by Fast Company as one of the world’s top 50 most innovative companies in 2015? It’s an entirely naturally fear, one that’s often evident in the laws of objects and movement.Ī gigantic ship typically lacks the agility of a small motor boat.Īn NBA power forward typically lacks the agility of the team’s point guard.Īnd a company that has doubled or tripled in size typically can’t “turn on a dime” quite like it used to when it was a team of four or five. With that single line he cut right through the heart of a fear held by many startup founders. “For a big company, we can turn on a dime when we need to,” says Mike Watson, Vice President of Product Strategy at Cree.
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