Combining capabilities from different industries It’s hard to get collaboration across silos in a corporation. But it’s potentially very rewarding. It’s even more difficult to get collaboration across industries. But potentially even more rewarding! A company may have the smartest people of the industry working for them, but more than 99% of the smart people in the world are not working for them. Those 99% also may have unique, complementary capabilities. Innovators can take this as a challenge to reach out to partners in other industries and try to create a win-win-win for their joint customers, for their business and for their partner’s business. A great example is a partnership…
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Got an idea. What now?
How to find support for your innovative idea. Let’s say you are in IT or manufacturing. You believe you have an exciting innovative idea. How do you get the sponsorship to try it out? I have met many passionate innovators who were not part of the business or commercial part of the company. They were really enthusiastic about an innovative solution they had come up with and had often pursued testing it on their own. Some got support and resources to experiment from their manager. Some even demonstrated that their innovation really worked. But then they became frustrated that nobody else was interested, that they couldn’t “sell” it to the…
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Measured
Should we measure innovation? An innovation is something that has never been done before. How do you measure something you don’t know yet? On the other hand, it’s unlikely that corporate leaders would pay us if we don’t accomplish anything. I decided to put innovation metrics in place, but wanted to avoid measuring too much and rather invest most of my time in stimulating innovation. So I needed to find something in the middle. The logical way was to go back to the two specific goals I got when I started in my Innovation Leader role: Across the organization, identify commercial innovations appropriate for global scaling Stimulate an innovation mindset,…
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Small but strong
Keeping the central innovation team lean Creating a large team generates the need for processes, meetings, coordination, etc. This relates to my earlier blog “Process kills innovation”. In many corporations where innovation needs to be stimulated, there is a need for a central accountability to provide focus, increase communication, alleviate barriers and track innovation efforts across the organization. There are several benefits of keeping this HQ team very small, e.g. 1-2 people: Simplicity: innovators don’t need to go through several levels to get input or ask for support; business teams know where to share new business needs that need innovative solutions Speed: decisions are made fast as there is no need…