So why is innovation execution so hard? Simply put, organizations are not built for it. Quite to the contrary, they are built for ongoing operations. They are built to be Performance Engines.

A well-run Performance Engine is the master of many challenges. It excels at serving today’s customers and fighting today’s rivals. It is terrific at driving for efficiency by holding employees accountable. It is on time, on budget, and on spec-every day, every week, and every month. It delivers bottom-line results each and every quarter. Like a finely crafted Swiss timepiece, a great Performance Engine never misses a beat.

As impressive as this may be, the Performance Engine confronts innovation with high hurdles. Innovation promises short-term pain for long-term gain, but the Performance Engine wants to win now. Innovation requires experimentation; the Performance Engine demands efficiency. Innovations sometimes fail; the Performance Engine struggles to forgive.

These contrasts illustrate the first law of the other side of innovation: Innovation and ongoing operations are always and inevitably in conflict.

One indicator of just how deep the incompatibilities run is the fundamental accounting premise that a business is an ongoing concern, meaning that the current period will look an awful lot like the prior one. This is, of course, the antithesis of innovation.

The most fundamental source of conflict, however, lies in the method of the Performance Engine. This method is the same in every industry, in every part of the world, and in every type of organization – including private sector, public sector, and socials sector organizations. It is to try to make every process and every activity as repeatable an as predictable as possible.

There is great power in both. When a process is repeatable, it is possible to break the process into small tasks and have people specialize. For centuries, specialization of labor has been recognized as a remarkable expedient to efficiency. Of equal importance, when a process becomes predictable, performances standards can be set and employees can be held accountable for very specific and quantified results.

Repeatability and predictability may be foundational for the Performance Engine, but they are also the antithesis of innovation. Far from being repeatable, innovation initiatives are intentional departures from the past. Far from being predictable, innovation initiatives proceed into territory in which there is no precedent upon which to base any forecast.

Excerpted from pages 6-8 of ‘Beyond the Idea’ by Vijay Govindarajan & Chris Trimble