Using a common language Over time, large corporations create their own language, acronyms, processes, procedures. These usually developed naturally. Everyone attaches the same meaning to key terms, helping to create efficiencies and a unique culture. It is important to also establish a common language for innovation. It’s not necessary to overcomplicate or overdo it. However, if one part of the organization defines experimentation as coming up with an idea, while another group thinks it means doing a pilot, there is a risk for confusion. This will complicate global innovation stimulation and support. A few basic agreed upon definitions can go a long way. Some of the ones I really secured…
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Customers, of course…
Engaging customers early in innovations Ultimately, it’s the benefit for the customer that drives the commercial value of an innovation. However, it’s so easy to forget this when being busy with planning, meeting, executing, innovating in a hectic corporate environment. Even with the best intentions. A nice example I recall happened in the very innovative Middle East region. One of the topics for the Open Innovation Challenge was “ How can we increase meaningful engagement with customers (doctors) in between the quarterly visits of our representatives?”. Amongst many exciting ideas, we selected the one that proposed to provide each customer with a “button”. The purpose was to put this button…
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Goooooal !!!
Innovation is not the objective One of the questions we as Innovation Leaders in a large corporation get is “what is Innovation?”. Often, our internal stakeholders assume they need to come up with disruptive, exciting, company-changing initiatives. This can create discouragement and cause innovators to give up trying. My answer is simple: (commercial) innovation is about solving our business and customer challenges in ways never tried before. For example: at a certain time, the global leadership asked me to focus innovation on 3 key business challenges: patients do not adhere to medicines, patients lack access to medicines (availability, affordability) and how we can increase engagement with customers. Once this kind…
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Millennials
Innovation champions Large organizations typically have many company-wide initiatives going on. To piggyback on those is a very effective way to further innovation objectives. As an example, my corporation created an HR program to accelerate the general management capabilities of very promising young employees who were less than 5 years with the company. These carefully selected employees were provided with 2 annual assignments in different countries and divisions. They also had to allocate 20% of their time to an “action learning project” in a team with 3 of their peers. The program was sponsored by the CEO. I regularly experienced a need for extra manpower to help develop innovation stimulating…
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More, more, more
Expanding the central innovation team without increasing bureaucracy As I advocated in my earlier blogs, I strongly believe in a small central innovation team. This team should support passionate local innovation leaders across the globe and should track exciting innovations. One of the reasons I want to limit the size of the central innovation team is to limit the number of innovation-stifling processes typically created by large teams. However, small can be too small. I faced a bandwidth challenge when more and more countries (up to 80) created the position of local innovation leader. They created these positions because they saw the results from the early adopting countries (about 30).…