Turning a challenge into an opportunity It is critical to share learnings between Innovation Leaders in different parts of the corporation: how do others stimulate innovation and support innovators in their area? In the commercial part of the organization, we typically organized Innovation Summits in each geographic region, which included about 10-12 countries. The Regional Innovation Leader organized once a year a 2-3 day meeting for the 10-12 Country Innovation Leaders. As in all corporations, now and then budget constraints didn’t allow for travel. Skipping these meetings risked creating a message that innovation is not important. One region (Latin America) faced that situation and came up with an innovative solution.…
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A time and place for resources
Innovation can even happen with limited budgets What are barriers for innovation? Limited budgets is often mentioned. I beg to differ. I believe this argument is often used as an excuse to stick with business as usual. As Innovation Leader, focused on Horizon 2 commercial innovation, I have guided innovators accross the globe for 5 years and have not observed one failure due to the lack of budget. Let’s have a look at each of the 3 innovation stages and how Innovation Leaders can be catalysts. Ideation. In this stage, the Innovation Leader can help the innovators to clearly define what they want to solve (the problem), how they plan…
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Innovation Webcasts
Inspiring and Connecting Innovation Leaders How do good innovations across the corporation look like? Any bright ideas on how I can best stimulate innovation in my country? These are questions I often got from colleague corporate Innovation Leaders across the globe, because these business Innovation Leaders were responsible for stimulating innovation as well as for identifying/supporting innovators in their geography. Their questions generated the idea to create a monthly webcast, inspired by the “TED talks” concept. We kicked off these Innovation webcasts with a few guiding principles: Objective: to inspire and to network (not to generate in depth discussions: those could be done as follow up between interested listeners and…
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Watch the horizon
Degrees of innovation Innovations can be categorized in many ways. One of the most familiar frameworks is the “3 Horizons” from McKinsey. Horizon 1 innovations are about the “now”: existing business models and core capabilities Horizon 2 innovations extend the core capabilities or reach new customers or markets Horizon 3 innovations typically have a longer term view: create new capabilities to build on (or defend against) disruptive opportunities Corporations likely focus on all 3 in a balanced way. In Merck (MSD outside the US/Canada), different teams, sometimes referred to as “innovation engines”, addressed each of these Horizons for commercial innovations. Note: this is separate from the R&D organization’s inventions: innovative medicines and…
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Never done before
Is Innovation a synonym for Marketing? Is Innovation just a different label for Marketing? Another trend in Marketing? Marketing tactics have always aimed at solving business and customer problems, at creating value and at differentiating brands from competition. Just like Innovations. The above goals are indeed common between Marketing and Innovation, especially for those of us who focus on Horizon 2 level innovation. Having worked in marketing for 30 years and in innovation for 5 years, I believe the key characteristic for innovative solutions is simply “New“. So I agree with Webster’s definition of innovation: “the introduction of something new”. Traditional marketing typically uses best practices, trying to improve those…