If you deliver products to Customers in a market that driven wildly by innovation, lets say for example Internet services, if your delivery mechanism is bound tightly by process you are in trouble. This is as innovation cannot be governed strictly by process. It is not possible to simply say "Do something innovative next week". Sure you can allow someone the time to try and be innovative but this doesn't mean they will be.
Innovation is not something that can easily be measured and it is a continual process. You don't be innovative for a week and then spend the next 6 months delivering the innovation. Innovation means being able to adapt to new ideas and concepts as they inexplicably fall in your lap from time to time. You have to be able to adjust. Of course, arguably, this is exactly what the Agile software development process allows you to do. Adapt and change the process that is used by a self organising team so they can best suit the manner that is required to deliver a product that will delight Customers.
Of course if you work in an environment where following a set process is valued more than innovation and change. Then if the market you deliver in is fuelled by change and innovation - you are in trouble. Innovation invariably results in change. change to your processes and change to your products. Innovation is all about being able to predict a Customers needs and delivering that need. Or alternatively spotting a customer trend and delivering that trend. Of course spotting trends gets you into the market at best second, but by allowing processes to change and adapt, and products to change and adapt, at least you can be in the market.
If however you are dictated to delivering your product, without room for thought and innovation, and rather by steps on a spreadsheet, then invariably by the time you deliver your product, the market you are delivering it to will have moved on and your Customers will not be interested.
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