Signaling the importance of innovation What is an Innovation Room? I’m referring to those dedicated spaces in corporate office buildings, typically the size of a mid to large size conference room. They look different than the other offices: often colorful, little or modular furniture, relaxing seats, loaded with innovation-stimulating technologies (3D printers, Amazon Echo’s, VR/AR tools, interactive screens, etc.). The purpose of these Innovation Rooms is to provide a dedicated, innovation inspiring location, where groups can gather to work on innovative solutions. In our company Innovation Rooms have been established in many countries. Those areas are specifically created to allow employees and customers to brainstorm, ideate and experiment with business…
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Quick wins
To maintain innovation momentum When leadership decides to stimulate internal innovations, the typical first step is to assign an Innovation Leader. Then, a lot of activity and excitement follows, ideas are generated and experiments are initiated. Some experiments fail, some need multiple iterations, many take a long time – often years – to demonstrate they work. Sometimes, this chain reaction happens: leadership interest wanes, the employees no longer feel the urgency to innovate and the corporation moves on to “other priorities”. Innovation Leaders manage expectations, communicate continuously, provide status updates while innovations mature. But leadership teams are used to see results – fast. So it helps to generate some quick…
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Hi-Lo-No Tech
Not all innovations should be technology driven Innovation is often treated as a synonym for technology or even digitalization. Technology certainly can solve business and customer problems in innovative ways. Digital technology can facilitate rapid prototyping, cheap iterating and quick scaling of successful innovations. However, it is unnecessary to limit innovation to technology/digital solutions only. The objective of innovation should be to solve problems and if a digital solution is the best one, go for it. If not, don’t. A few examples of non-digital innovations to address specific problems: Affordability – Problem: some Hepatitis C patients in India do not have the cash flow to immediately pay in full for…
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IP
Not to forget… When developing a new product, it is obvious to file for Intellectual Property (IP) protection. When developing an innovative service “around” an existing product, we do not always think about protecting it. We were fortunate to have a forward thinking innovator in our Pharma IT organization, who did file patents for his innovative service ideas. An example: In several countries, when physicians recommend adult vaccines, the patient first needs to fill the prescription in the pharmacy and then go back to the physician to get the injection. Many patients never come back, because they do not want to waste their time in the waiting room again. This…
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Learning curve
What I found out… Innovation is about solving specific problems, addressing needs for improvement, generate changes for the better by experimenting, learning, adapting. Innovation leadership can sometimes be a little bit like this too. Last year, Scott Kirsner from InnovationLeader interviewed me on the topic “What did you wish you had known before you started as Innovation Leader?”. Although I believe I did most of what’s needed to stimulate innovation in a large organization, there were a few practices I would have doubled down on, knowing now the critical value of: … a specific definition. If innovation is not really well defined, there will be different interpretations, making it very…
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Musts
Recommended innovation resources I’m often asked which innovation congresses, books, blogs I like. It’s impossible to appropriately cover all kinds of innovation in a few media outlets: open innovation, lean innovation, reverse innovation, disruptive innovation, … And like innovation itself, media change constantly. Following are sources I really valued, based on my role as corporate innovation leader. I selected 2 for each category. I have no financial benefit in any of these. Books The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail by Clayton Christensen. This is the classic everyone working on innovation must read. Inspirational, clear examples of good companies in different industries that failed when disruptive…
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Strings attached
Investing effectively in innovation Innovation needs resources: time, people, passion … and budgets. Many innovators do not need large amounts of money. Certainly not in the early stages, when ideas are run by a few customers and key assumptions are checked. In my experience, budgets for these early stage experiments were easily provided by local (operational, country) management. In some cases, local management didn’t have the resources, or didn’t want to invest in the innovation. This could be because the the innovation was not addressing a priority issue for their part of the organization. However, some of those innovations did have potential value for the broader corporation. In that case,…
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Gamification
Innovative scientific education One challenge all marketers face is how to engage customers in a relevant and impactful way. Think doctors at large congresses. One can only attract or keep customers engaged at a booth for a while with publication reprints, videos or offering a cup of coffee. Inspiration can come from the game industry. For a doctors audience, you need to integrate of course relevant medical-scientific content. Two applied gamification examples: POKÉMON GO- inspired. The diabetes team in Ireland created an educational concept, based on this game. Congress attendees downloaded an app on their smartphone. Then they had to locate and “capture” about 30 signs within the massive congress…
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So far and still so close
Innovating with remote customers You are an innovator in a global corporation. Your customers are spread all over the world. How do you engage with them to come up with innovative solutions for their needs? Of course, it’s best to work through colleagues that are located close to where the customer lives. But there are occasions where it’s hard to meet with customers, like those that live in remote geographies. Travel costs may limit the number of times you can run innovative ideas by those customers. I recall an innovation session with about 30 global veterinary colleagues in the Netherlands. They had received the assignment to quickly come up with…
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Regarding silos
Collaboration for innovation across divisions Many wars have been won through “divide and rule”. Successful innovation in corporations is just the opposite: “collaborate and win”. When employees from different departments meet and bring together their expertise and networks, magic can happen. In practice, it’s a bit more complicated. How to find the right collaborators in the corporate maze? How to secure sponsorship from leaders in other divisions? How to reward collaboration across divisions? An example. The IT organization had created a small team (3 people) in the IT hub in the Czech Republic. Their assignment was to create innovative, structured IT experiments in healthcare, based on cutting edge technologies. They…