The ever-changing business landscape forces companies to innovate rapidly and effectively. However, innovation is a broadly defined and overused term, which ultimately makes it a trite concept, the opposite of the desired effect.

“Innovation is what we need to do with modern technology to enable the enterprise and the business world and be creative humans and to use disciplines which we didn’t typically bring to work before,” said Andrew Wilson (pictured, left), chief information officer of Accenture LLP.

Wilson spoke with Rebecca Knight (@knightrm), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the AWS Executive Summit in Las Vegas. He was joined by Mike Moore (pictured, right), senior principal of thought leadership at Accenture. They discussed what innovation means, how to spur it, and how to maintain it. (* Disclosure below.)

A balancing act

What are the most important factors involved in innovation? A balance between creativity and logic, according to Wilson. “I think there’s logic and rationale, but there’s also entertainment, fun, modern consumer-like experimentation, risk-taking, things of that nature,” he said.

Companies need to give employees creative license within a certain set of boundaries, according to Moore, who has extensively researched companies’ approaches to innovation and how they succeed. “We surveyed 840 executives from a variety of different companies, different industries, different geographies to understand their approach to innovation and those who were doing it particularly well and those maybe not so well,” Moore stated.

Only 14 percent of respondents successfully turned their investments in innovation into accelerated growth. So, how did those 14 percent succeed? Three major factors contributed to their success: putting a clear set of processes around their innovation activities and linking them to operational and financial performance metrics; disruption-mindedness to create entirely new markets; and change-mindedness to change the nature of their own organizations.

Maintaining an equilibrium of change

The state of innovation is highly variable, depending on the industry, geography, and the type of company. Even micro-level factors, such as a company’s leadership and culture, can drastically impact innovation, so there is no way to truly ensure its effectiveness, according to Wilson.

“Innovation is very much characterized by something that can be fast-failed, do, step, move sideways, do again,” Wilson explained. Therefore, setting an agenda for innovation is highly important, he added.

Moore sets his research agenda in a similar manner to consulting: by talking to customers about key issues that they face and interviewing executives and academics. His research has revealed that many executives have been reporting smaller product cycle times, which forces them to build new innovation units to keep up with the mercurial market.

Too much innovation can be a bad thing, however, according to Wilson, who said “innovation fatigue” is always possible. “You have to find a way to make innovation a constant and a norm,” Wilson stated.

The bottom line: Creativity and pace go hand in hand. And due to the high rate of attrition among Fortune 500 companies, companies have a half-life for which they must prepare themselves, he concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the AWS Executive Summit. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the AWS Executive Summit event. Neither Accenture LLP, the event sponsor, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE