Based on a real story of an innovation leader in a large corporation There are as many definitions of Innovation Leader as there are innovation leaders. This is about my experience. The position of Innovation Leader in the company I was working for, was created 5 years ago, because the commercial leadership identified a major challenge. Many innovative experiments were happening across the company, but successful ones from one country were not reproduced in other relevant countries. The reason was that there was often no awareness of the innovation beyond the local entity and no good understanding of the business value of the innovation. So my assignment from the leadership…
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Mingle!
Good ideas can come from everywhere Steve Jobs combined his passion for design with his expertise in technology to innovate. Few of us have this kind of double talent or skill. But every large organization has! Corporations have an amazing number of in-house experts. They might work in Marketing, IT, technical/medical, legal, compliance, finance, HR, manufacturing, etc. Many of these colleagues also have links to external partners. Innovation Leaders can engage with these experts and connect them to each other, to stimulate innovation and create networks. I recall a situation in which a marketing innovator in Latin America wanted to solve a market development challenge. He came up with a…
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Align
Focus innovation on business priorities Innovation is not an objective. It’s a way to reach an objective. This objective can vary from specific, short term business and customer needs to broad, visionary strategic goals. Within large corporations, it is relatively easy to define the short term, tactical challenges. The operational business teams and leaders surely have a list ready. This is where innovation leaders can generate quick results by simply issuing innovation challenges. Throughout the organization or even externally, individuals or small teams can come up with innovative ideas. Selected ideas are then quickly tested. Note: it’s critical that the business team provides a very specific problem statement or a…
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Climate change!
Giving innovators a chance Who in the company should innovate? Every employee or only those who are passionate about innovation? I’m making the case here for the latter. This means creating “a climate that stimulates innovation”, in contrast to creating “an innovation culture”. Let me explain. A corporate culture means that every employee should believe and behave in alignment with it. Think e.g. of a company with a strong ethical culture that successfully creates trust with customers and stakeholders: all employees, without exception, demonstrate this ethical behavior – and likely the company wants to keep it this way. A corporate “innovation” culture thus implies that every employee should innovate, be…