Last fall, the nation witnessed a presidential election featuring these two views on innovation: The challenger called it key to economic growth and job creation, increasingly important to American competitiveness in the global economy; the incumbent declared that America’s economic growth and competitiveness depended on its people’s capacity to innovate.

The electorate resoundingly agreed; 98.27 percent voted for one of those views.

If it’s a given that innovation is good, and good everywhere, a metropolitan area that wants to be known for both its entrepreneurship and innovation needs to position itself to stand out relative to competitor and peer cities. And on that score, innovators and academics generally agree: More can be done in Kansas City. The question is, what? And how? And what’s getting in the way of more innovation, the kind that will produce the long-term job growth we’re looking for?

Before we can address those questions, innovators say, it’s important to understand that not all innovation is the same. Some involves taking an existing product or service and making a tweak or two to drive change.

“The most innovative people know about a lot of things, because a lot of innovation is borrowing concepts from other fields,” says Nick Franano, president and CEO of Novita Therapeutics, which develops new drugs and medical devices. An example: New technologies to drill for oil. “You can take that new concept and apply it to making a medical device, make the connection in how to solve a problem with blockage in a blood vessel,” he said.

More profound is the innovation that leads to radical breakthroughs, disrupts existing legacy businesses, and supports Joseph Schumpeter’s theory of creative destruction.

“Some innovation is motivated by pain,” says John Norton, associate director of the UMKC Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. “You have a thing you want to achieve, and something hurting you or stopping you from doing that.” Other innovation is motivated by vision—and that, Norton says, is demonstrably a skill that can be taught. “It’s not a question anymore; we know things we can do to allow people to be more creative,” he said. “It’s not a matter of if, but how.”

Franano isn’t so sure. He thinks innovation may be closer to a finite commodity. “I’m a big believer in those programs best suited to help people, who by their very nature are innovative, develop the other skills they need to be productive,” he said, “but I think it’s less efficient to take a person out of the MBA program and say we’re going to make you more innovative. I don’t think that works very well.”

Where academia can support innovation, he said, is by taking people who are inclined to innovate, and helping them develop other skills they need to be productive. “A lot of innovative people have ended up living unproductive lives because they never found the right environment to express and commercialize it,” he said.

Reggie Chandra, whose Rhythm Engineering is shaking up the world of traffic signalization with a computerized system of controls to decrease congestion and travel times, says the support given to innovators is a huge factor. “I find that very few people are visionaries,” he said, and because of that, creating environments and systems that leverage innovative talents is key.

At MedTrak Services, a fast-growth pharmaceutical-benefit management company, CEO Larkin O’Keefe takes a balanced view of the role innovation can play. “When I look at entrepreneurs and companies that have grown, it’s come from guys who have a good idea, are willing to take a chance on it, then make it a great idea,” he said. “I don’t see a lot of radical ideas turning into great ideas and companies.”

The organizational structure, though, is essential to hone that great idea into a good one, O’Keefe said. “Taking the good ideas and improving upon them, having the wherewithal and the infrastructure to complement the ideas. If you can do that, it’s all about ‘How do we take this to the market?’ Because ultimately, a lot of great ideas never come about because they don’t have the sales/marketing savvy.”

That’s unfortunate, he said, “but when it comes right down to it, a company succeeding is all about revenue. You need a good product, you need to get a good sales force, and if you have those things, you have a good chance of being successful.”

Chandra also noted the need for an organizational safety net.

“It’s not the fact that you’re an innovator; you need other skills,” Chandra said. “Lots of people have ideas, but beyond the discipline of having an idea, you then need to break it down, find out what it takes to make it work and execute it. But there are two things in any business: innovation and marketing. The marketing takes the innovation and communicates the message that creates the perceived value. You can innovate all you want, but if there’s no execution and marketing, you’re not getting anywhere.”

Ryan Weber, president of KC Next—The Technology Council of Greater Kansas City, noted that entrepreneurship itself may take many forms—someone opening a grocery store or a buying a rental property can be one. True innovation is something else. “Disruptives—those are the ones we want to focus on, the new wave of companies that employ thousands of people,” he said.

But some key data suggest that innovation isn’t broadly practiced, Franano said. “When you look at the number of new patents issued, a relatively small number of people make the majority of the inventions,” he said. “Right now, when you look at human capital, innovation is concentrated.”

Some environments can foster innovation, some companies can create it, but to get more innovation, it may be necessary to hire more innovative people. Which presents challenges of its own, Franano noted. “In a larger organization, innovative people, from a personality standpoint, are often difficult—we all know that—because they’re unreasonable, by definition. An innovative person says, ‘Here is a thing that does not exist which should exist,’ but in all of human history, it hasn’t yet existed, so it’s unreasonable to say that something not ever conceived of, by however many billion people, is something that’s needed.”

That’s why, he said, so many innovators are working in small companies, where more informal organization structures allow them to do what they do best, without rocking corporate organizational boats.

So how do we get more innovation? Step One, experts say, is removing barriers to it, for surely there is more innovative capacity now under-used.

“Companies can facilitate innovative thinking,” said Norton, “you just need to recognize that there are limits on how far afield you can look for solutions to problems.” It wouldn’t help for someone at Sprint to produce a breakthrough concept for transportation, he said, because that’s not part of Sprint’s business model. Within existing companies, though, there are ways to extract more innovation.

“We can show you all the ways you can be creative, and the ways you can stop people from being creative,” Norton said. “Sometimes we get so focused as managers that we don’t realize we’re doing some things that aren’t in our best interests. We stop people from being creative when they want to. A lot depends on what organizations do to interfere with that process.”

“It’s been my experience in some places that people demand creativity and pound the desk to get it, then slap the daylights out of people who bring radical ideas,” he said. “It doesn’t take too many times, when you see Johnson get punched in nose, before not only Johnson quits bringing ideas, but so will anybody who looks at Johnson’s nose. I know people who do that and are aware of that fact, and when I ask them why they don’t stop, all they can say is, ‘I can’t help myself.’”

The life of an innovator, Franano said, is not an easy one; it tends to be lonely and full of rejection, especially in larger corporations. That factor can be compounded by Kansas City’s reputation for being more conservative than counterparts on the coasts when it comes to novel suggestions. “Generally speaking, it’s much easier in California to find people with open minds toward completely novel ideas,” he said. “In the Midwest, it’s a little harder.”

The flip side of that is that we have resources like the Kauffman Foundation, programs focused innovation not just at UMKC, but at KU, K-State, MU and private universities—and the remnants of a frontier mentality that took a just-do-it approach to life.

Weber, of KC Next, said Midwestern modesty is also a barrier; organizations often celebrate their staff achievements and ideas
in-house, but don’t extoll that to the broader business community. “I think more people in the Kansas City community can learn from
people who have been innovators and been successful,” he said.

One other asset Kansas City has going for it is the mother-ship phenomenon, Weber said. Former employees from large companies have taken concepts into development on their own, having learned the lessons of successful product development and promotion. That influence, and the growing numbers of successful entrepreneurs who are mentoring younger executives through the Kauffman Foundation, in university classrooms or with personal relationships, can have a long-lasting impact.

“What has helped me the most is hanging out with other entrepreneurs who are innovative,” Chandra said. “I am inspired by other entrepreneurs who have taken the risk.”

Weber said the influence of successful executives in mentoring roles is a powerful one. “That’s how the ecosystem works,” he said. “Look at Silicon Valley as an illustration of that; here, Sprint is our Apple or Google—Cerner, DST, Hallmark, they all recruit and produce a lot of very talented people who want to go forward and make their dream a reality.

“Now we’re seeing those major corporations working with entrepreneurs to grow the tech community,” he said. “It’s fantastic to see that, because who knows what happens from there?”