A Guest Blog from Larry Ack­er­man, Founder, The Iden­tity Cir­cle, Author of Iden­tity is Des­tiny and The Iden­tity Code

As we slide into 2010, work­ing to trade reces­sion for recov­ery, there seems to be more and more talk about how to rekin­dle top-line growth, how to build com­pet­i­tive advan­tage, and how to find and hold onto really great talent.

If, how­ever, there is one thing that sig­nals cau­tious opti­mism among beaten down com­pa­nies and stressed out exec­u­tives, it is talk about inno­va­tion. Why? Because inno­va­tion is the art of the pos­si­ble. It demands opti­mism, con­jur­ing up such close-cousins as trans­for­ma­tion, cre­ativ­ity, poten­tial, and renewal. In short, inno­va­tion is the embod­i­ment of cor­po­rate hope.

Where does inno­va­tion come from?

A recent arti­cle in The New York Times, Now at Star­bucks: A Rebound, describes how the com­pany, under CEO Howard Schultz, is in the midst of shuf­fling off the cookie-cutter meth­ods of assembly-line cap­puc­ci­nos, in favor of the kind of eclec­tic, “start-up” atti­tude that spawned the busi­ness, begin­ning in the late 80s.

The arti­cle unfolded for me like a play, with Schultz offer­ing hope and ana­lysts offer­ing con­cern that Star­bucks is refus­ing to accept its “new identity” –

Schultz: “We lost our way…I told employ­ees to break the rules and do things for yourself.”

Ana­lyst: “The kind of res­o­nance the com­pany once had is going to be hard to recapture.”

If inno­va­tion is the art of the pos­si­ble, then Star­bucks is def­i­nitely inno­vat­ing. But where does that inno­va­tion come from? Does it flow sim­ply from cre­at­ing ever-new-and-improved cus­tomer expe­ri­ences, or is this kind of inno­va­tion trans­lat­ing what was into might be?

Want to inno­vate? Go back to the future.

A great movie — an even bet­ter mantra when it comes to spark­ing inno­va­tion. Schultz’s call for change isn’t about rein­vent­ing Star­bucks — it’s about redis­cov­er­ing Star­bucks: reclaim­ing those essen­tial and unique char­ac­ter­is­tics that accounted for its for­ma­tive appeal. Will Star­bucks suc­ceed in its odyssey? I believe it will

Another fine exam­ple of back to the future inno­va­tion is Apple, everyone’s peren­nial inno­va­tion poster child. What is so com­pelling about Apple’s inno­va­tion two-step is that it is no more, nor less than the con­tin­ual rein­ter­pre­ta­tion of the company’s orig­i­nal mis­sion: to human­ize the com­puter. And day after day, year after year, that’s exactly what Apple does, with charm and brilliance.

The suc­cess of back to the future inno­va­tion isn’t lim­ited to high-flying lifestyle and con­sumer tech­nol­ogy con­cerns. It is alive and well among a wide vari­ety of com­pa­nies. Take IBM, for instance. About to enjoy its 100th birth­day, IBM gen­er­ates enor­mous energy, impact and prof­its by con­tin­u­ally rein­ter­pret­ing its found­ing intent: to apply tech­nol­ogy solu­tions to solve busi­ness problems.

IBM is a problem-solving jug­ger­naut, whose cur­rent focus on help­ing us become a “Smarter Planet” allows it to do what it does best: Improve our soci­etal infra­struc­ture, eco­nom­i­cally and socially, cre­at­ing, among other things, more effi­cient cities and more patient-centric health care.

Tech­nol­ogy to one side, think also about Wal­mart who, 24/7, finds ways to give ordi­nary folk the chance to buy the same things as rich peo­ple. Look as well to Ford, whose new global offering, the Fiesta, con­tin­ues to democ­ra­tize the auto­mo­bile, some­thing the com­pany started doing in 1900.

Cof­fee. Tech­nol­ogy. Soci­etal infra­struc­ture. Retail. Cars. Inno­va­tion doesn’t depend on what busi­ness you’re in — it depends on hon­or­ing who you are as a busi­ness, by con­stantly trans­lat­ing your company’s roots into new forms of value that drive progress and, in turn, keep your orga­ni­za­tion fresh, rel­e­vant — and alive.

Is ‘new and improved’ killing innovation?

Con­sciously or not, Howard Schultz under­stands the power of back to the future inno­va­tion. Unteth­ered to the roots of the com­pany, inno­va­tion can take on a life of its own, pro­duc­ing prof­its but los­ing its strate­gic value. New mis­sion or pur­pose state­ments, often the result of new man­age­ment teams, can draw com­pa­nies away from their core iden­ti­ties, lead­ing to new prod­ucts and ser­vices that, unin­ten­tion­ally, pull the orga­ni­za­tion fur­ther and fur­ther away from its essen­tial cen­ter of gravity.

The real power of tak­ing a back to the future approach to inno­va­tion isn’t just its impact on pro­duc­tiv­ity and prof­its; back to the future inno­va­tion also leads to a more coher­ent orga­ni­za­tion, where the pieces and parts of the com­pany fit together well, adding up to a more strate­gi­cally effi­cient enterprise.

What to do?

As the seeds of eco­nomic recov­ery begin to sprout and your orga­ni­za­tion starts to think seri­ously about inno­va­tion and the invest­ment it calls for, here are three ques­tions for you to address:

Does every­one in the inno­va­tion loop know who we are, where we come from, and why it mat­ters? Make a point of com­mu­ni­cat­ing the value-creating roots of the enter­prise, how they’ve con­tributed to growth over time and their impor­tance as the institution’s cen­ter of gravity.

Are we capa­ble of chang­ing from a change­less foun­da­tion? Man­age the iden­tity para­dox. Help your inno­va­tors to see the power and wis­dom of stay­ing in sync with the orig­i­nal vision or prin­ci­ples of the com­pany, while aggres­sively rein­ter­pret­ing them to meet chang­ing mar­ket needs.

Can we make Shake­speare stick? When it comes to inno­va­tion, chan­nel­ing the Bard is a good idea. Shake­speare was an inno­va­tor in his own right. He wrote plays that altered how audi­ences per­ceived life. He changed people’s views of human rela­tion­ships. But that’s not why inno­va­tors should keep him in mind. Shake­speare — like Howard Schultz — under­stood the power of iden­tity as a force to be reck­oned with when he said, “This above all: To thine own self be true.”

Com­ment from Ger­ald Sindell:

Really ter­rific. I think, or hope, that’s there’s one more piece here, and that would be the link between the inno­va­tion that absolutely was the core of every suc­cess­ful new company’s suc­cess and the under­stand­ing that the orig­i­nal inno­v­a­tive impulse (and suc­cess) must be nur­tured as the dri­ver of inno­va­tion for­ever. When the 2nd gen­er­a­tion of man­age­ment becomes a care­taker instead of inno­va­tion dri­ver, the org will cer­tainly whither. That would be Ford after Ford, Apple in the years Jobs was gone, and so on.

Iden­tity, which is based so pro­foundly on the ini­tial inno­va­tion (and inno­va­tors), is the eter­nal key to authen­tic innovation.