Why Do Innovation Speedboats Not Succeed?

Legacy organizations set up speedboats to develop new products and services separate from their ‘tanker’ organizations with the hope that eventually the creations of the speedboat can either be baked into the larger organizations (docking), or the speedboat can pull the larger organization (tugboat), or the speedboat can become the new organization and accommodate the personnel of the tanker. Although many organizations have tried this, we have not seen a successful speedboat example in the wild which relieved the larger tanker from duty. 

Back to the question of why innovation speedboats are unsuccessful.

Innovative internet driven companies use PI, or permissionless innovation to develop their products and services. They build because they want to and no one told them not to. However, legacy companies are unable to culturally bend themselves to allow this type of innovation to unfold, nor do they set up their speedboats to operate with PI.  Most of the time the speedboats mirror the hierarchy, titles and people of the ‘tanker’. They are not diverse in thought. Some heavily regulated industries like Pharma and Finance are exceptions where speedboats already are up against industry regulations. However, in a lot of cases organizations create their own ‘self imposed’ regulations that are packaged as organizational design, culture, and processes that work against PI and are therefore working against the goals they’ve set for the speedboat in the first place. You can’t blame legacy organizations for this. It’s their modus operandi. However, we always advise to set up an outside organization that does not share employees, leadership, boards, etc. Only then can PI take hold and be able to grow organically. 

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