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. They decided to keep the meeting, but organize it via live webcast. As it’s not effective to watch a webcast for a full day, they split it up: a 2-hour session each day, 4 days in a row, thus creating an “Innovation Week”. They capitalized on this format to make it “big”:
- They invited all Country Managing Directors to join the webcast (encouraged by the presence of the Regional President, CMO and other members of the Regional Leadership Team). This further stimulated engagement of local leadership in innovation.
- Some Country Innovation Leaders had created a Country Innovation Team, with members from different departments like IT, communications and legal. These Teams were also invited to join and thus learned first hand from the experiences in other countries.
- The program was facilitated to be as interactive as possible, allowing each Country Innovation Leader to share and discuss successes and learnings. Inviting innovators from their country to directly discuss their experience made it even more realistic.
- The Regional Innovation Leader often used this opportunity to launch major new campaigns, like a Regional Innovation Award Challenge.
- As global Innovation Leader, I reinforced the company’s global commitment for innovation by joining in person the local teams in 4 different countries during those 4 days.
This Innovation Week concept became such a success, that it was held every year, even in those years that there was (budget for) an in-person Regional Innovation Summit. In-person events provide the unique benefit of building personal networks and deep discussions, also outside the formal sessions.
As Jon Kabat-Zinn said:
“You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.”
So, as Innovation Leader, I ensured sharing of experiences across Innovation Leaders in the corporation, fully supporting whichever format was most appropriate for the different regions.
More about this topic: Design Innovation Conferences, Retreats & Summits by Dr. Darin Eich
What do you think? Please share below!
More of my blogs on innovation: Wim Vandenhouweele
