New innovation blog: 1+1=3
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Oscar
Annual Innovation Awards Annual awards for innovation are the best and worst thing around. Awards ceremonies can be a time consuming show. Awards can be a demotivator for those who do not win. Innovation shouldn’t be a once a year event. Still, I recommend organizing annual Awards, as they are a high impact opportunity to promote innovation in the corporation. How did we organize them? Once a year, I asked the commercial leaders for their most critical business/customer challenges that required innovative solutions. I secured the final challenge selection and sponsorship from the President. Proposals were solicited through broad global communication. A jury selected the winning innovations, based on specific…
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Herding cats
Tracking and sharing innovations Innovation is dynamic. Innovations can start every moment. They change continuously. They fail frequently. Multiply this activity across 100 countries, 10 brands, 5 divisions and its clear that an innovation leader cannot manage this number of initiatives with an Excel spreadsheet. The simple solution is to buy one of the many off the shelf software programs and roll it out across the organization. It’s fast. It has been tested. It looks professional. However, the software program may not address specific needs. Does it help the innovation leader to identify new innovations, to prioritize innovations, to track ongoing innovations, to manage Innovation Challenges/competitions, to connect innovators, to…
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Crossing industries
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…
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On investments
The use of a Reverse Income Statement Experiments, e.g. in medical research and development, are based on inspiration, developed ideas and targeted investments. Many do not deliver a successful outcome or solution. This is also the case for commercial innovation experiments. An innovation-championing senior business leader asked me to help his teams identify those commercial innovation experiments that would potentially provide the highest positive return. He was looking for an easy to use tool to help innovators, a tool simple enough not to discourage his passionate innovators. Based on the Discovery-Driven Growth* work from Rita McGrath and Ian MacMillan, we developed a simplified “Reverse Income Statement” template. It’s a tool…
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Where are they?
How to identify bright innovation stars in the corporation Of course, they are everywhere! But how to find those stars within the corporation? I believe there are 3 simple steps to approach this: Problem awareness. The potential innovators need to be aware of what problem the organization is trying to solve. The Innovation Leader can play an important role by creating awareness across the organization of the problem the leadership wants to focus on. It takes never ending time and effort to make sure that every employee has a deep insight in the business and customer challenges that need an innovative solution. Ceativity. Creative colleagues need to be identified, supported…
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Law & Order
When innovators should engage Legal/Compliance In highly regulated industries like healthcare, adherence to specific laws and regulations is critical, but may slow down or even inhibit innovation. It doesn’t have to: many highly regulated industries have been extremely innovative, think finance or aviation. Often, compliance implementation creates a risk averse environment and is perceived by business teams as a reason not to innovate. Innovation leaders can address this barrier to innovation by engaging with their legal/compliance partners, explain what the specific innovation is about, create trust and discuss collaboration. Timing is essential. Ideally, Compliance should be part of the earliest innovation phases. If it is not possible to engage Compliance…