No Innovation = No Value = No Job

Posted by • October 12th, 2009 • 3 Comments

It is well known that corporate America is looking to reduce costs to stay competitive in the global market. This cost focus will result in an even larger number of jobs being offshored and automated, including high-end white collar and technical jobs. It is an economic certainty. The days of having your job be the means to an end… well, they mean to end.

But before you despair, you need to know that there is some good news. The old economic model trapped many of us in dead-end jobs, hoping that our boss would be in a good mood when reviews came around. That is no way to live. That is economic bondage. That is zombie-central.

The good news is that at the same time companies are looking to reduce cost, they are also looking to increase value. Every company has competitors (whether they know it or not). The only way to beat competitors in today’s market is to deliver more value for the money. Companies are starting to realize that they can’t add value by cutting costs.

You hear the pundits talk about the “kinds of jobs that are a sure bet in the future.” The prognosticators talk about engineering, education and finance jobs all being sure things. Or at least they did before the meltdown disrupted each of those job markets. But they have it all wrong. It won’t be about job categories staying here versus going somewhere else. It will be about value propositions.

You can ship IT jobs offshore all day long, but you can’t outsource the person who comes up with the next great software service. Manufacturing jobs will stop moving offshore when it isn’t about low cost mass production. Textiles will stop moving offshore when it isn’t about competing on price. You can name any industry, any segment and there are examples of companies that are creating jobs rather than shipping all their operations overseas.

The companies that are hiring here are competing on value. Companies who compete on value can only survive when they have people who are engaged, energized and inspired. Simply put, people who are zombies can’t innovate. Zombies just repeat tasks and follow directions. That’s not innovating. That’s work that can be done cheaper in China.

No innovation, no value. No value, no job. Sorry, but we can’t compete on price.

Innovation takes creative spark, passion and fire. That takes you being completely absorbed, proud of the value you create and energized by the challenges you face. As we talked about last week, that takes you having fun.

Now you know why it is so critical for you to stop being a zombie in your job and in your job search. You have to sell your ability to create value. And you know that creating value means that you have to be inspired.

And, next week we will talk about how we can find your sense of purpose and connect that to your value proposition.

Guest Blogger Jeff Hunter is a member of the Glassdoor.com Clearview Collection and is an award-winning technologist, strategist, author and entrepreneur. He currently serves as the Vice President of HR Solutions at Dolby Laboratories. Prior to joining Dolby, Jeff served as Sr. Director of EA University at Electronic Arts, the world’s largest digital entertainment company. In 2007, Jeff launched the “Talent Unconference” a meeting of the top minds in HR, business and technology to discuss new methods for developing and driving talent-centric businesses.

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  • http://www.facebook.com/johnsumser John Sumser

    I wonder how the folks in China and India would respond to your assertion that they can't generate innovation for their customers.

    Yes, creating value is powerful and important. And, it is a good proactive approach to career management. But I'm not so sure that someone who is hungrier, cheaper and willing to work longer hours isn't a better employee.

    Zombies lose their jobs. Agreed.

    But, are you saying that one must to demonstrate passion and engagement before one gets the next gig? Do we have to demonstrate our engagement as a prerequisite to getting hired?

    Does that mean that we're looking at the end of jobs and the beginning of lots of little microenterprises?

  • Jeff Hunter

    It is always a pleasure to have a conversation with my friend John in a public forum. In response:

    Clearly, India and China can innovate. But innovation jobs are not going to low-cost locations at the same rate that process intensive and analytical jobs are moving there, simply because the populations do not yet (underline “yet”) have the infrastructure, cultural norms and widespread higher education systems that support systemic innovation capabilities. Put another way, if you live and work in a country that was a member of the G7 your job is more secure if you can innovate than if your job involves manual or analytical work.

    Hungrier, cheaper and more sleep deprived does not equal better value for the dollar. Language, literacy, access to technology and education… these are all factors that need to be taken into account when evaluating “a better employee”. I think the real danger is coupling hungrier, cheaper, BETTER EDUCATED with increasing automation as a function of Moore's law. Those two together mean G7 countries either need to innovate, dramatically lower their standard of living or learn to speak Mandarin. G7 countries cannot compete on price, all other things being equal, but you can't say that just because something is cheaper per unit that it is better.

    Yes, one must demonstrate engagement prior to getting your next gig. The point of the post was to correlate engagement with productivity when dealing with innovation. So I can't hire someone to produce value through innovation unless I know they have an interest in the area they would be innovating in. This will be part of the next post, as the best way to ensure engagement is to align an individual's sense of purpose with the organization's observed economic purpose.

    Which leads me to the final answer: yes, for the purposes of managing your career but also for the purposes of describing the future of work, there will be a lot of microenterprises. Exactly. But this has been going on for a long time. This should not be a surprise to anyone. The days of lifetime employment gave ways to the day of at will employment. The days of at will employment are giving way to contracted services. Pay for attendance moves to pay for performance. Pay for performance moves to pay for delivery. The whole system is moving away from employment and towards microenterprise. It is a long-term, inevitable trend; a trend which will accelerate if we decouple access to health insurance from full-time employment, since you can translate every other benefit into cash equivalent.

  • darklight777

    Hi there,

    Interesting post, however there is one thing that I would like to mention after reading your discussion with John Sumser below – a lot of companies treat people with technical skills like generic parts, like pegs to be filled into the appropriately shaped hole. I think this is a mentality that has moved costs to be the biggest concern when hiring/laying off technical people.

    I guess my point is that there is no real opportunity to 'increase value' for tech and engineering line workers in most companies, because these people are seen as interchangeable parts who do standardized tasks. An experienced database developer is not necessarily more innovative or creative than a newer programmer, just basically more productive with his time and his tools, therefore increasing his line item value per hour, but not really innovating.

    Cheers,

    darkLight