As Michal Postula’s title suggests - Director of Strategy and Innovation (IoT) at Schneider Electric, a French multinational specialising in energy management and automation – he fully understands the critical nexus between innovation and strategy. Simply generating ideas is a waste of time. The artform is in being a change agent, in commercialising ‘the new’. Michal has a driving curiosity about ‘better’, on improving what exists today.
Pressure is mounting on all organisations to embrace change and the latest buzz of teaming ‘innovation’ with ‘disruption’. But the commitment to a search for improvement is often shelved because it’s seen to be all too hard, too ‘out there’.
Michal has studied innovation theory and is a passionate fan of the grand masters. But he’s also conscious of how it applies in reality, and especially the reality of large enterprises. He removes the fear element, “Innovation needs to be contextual to each organisation and environment. 90 percent of the time it’s about successfully evolving to the obvious next stage. Most innovation is incremental and that’s actually ok for most organisations. Natural progression shouldn’t be viewed as a second class citizen to disruptive innovation. Not every company is primed to be a Facebook or a Tesla – and nor should it be. I’ve always had a curiosity and aptitude for breaking new ground but I never set out to focus on strategy or to have innovation in my job title. But because innovation can’t succeed without strategy, I made a conscious decision to become more educated and more involved in long term decision making.”
