Collaborators for Innovation When commercial innovators want to address a problem, IT technologies and colleagues often come to mind first. However, we shouldn’t underestimate the potential solutions that can be generated in collaboration with colleagues from other disciplines, like finance or manufacturing. I described in an earlier blog how to break through silo’s. Let me illustrate how business challenges can be solved by working together with manufacturing colleagues. Following are examples of innovations related to two key areas of manufacturing. Packaging Problem: a key customer, a major hospital in the Netherlands, was often under stocked / over stocked on Product X. Reason: the hospital typically ordered medicines monthly. Because of…
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People, people, people
Innovation Leaders engaging with Human Resources Although usually not the primary reason to start an innovation program in a corporation, there can be significant value of this kind of program for employee development. A few examples of the benefits I observed: Employee engagement Innovators. I have seen employees from all across the corporation come up with great ideas and passionately pursuing them. These colleagues emerged from Marketing, Sales, IT, Manufacturing, Medical Affairs, Finance, … A sales representative in India won a global innovation award for his idea to address the high cost of inviting global opinion leaders to local events in India (the solution was based on hologram technology). The…
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Stop/start
Creating a climate that stimulates innovation When corporate leaders decide that more innovation needs to come from within the organization, many employees need to stop some old habits and start new ones. A few examples: Leadership Start/do: communicate frequently, strongly and precisely about the problems the corporation wants innovative solutions for. Stop/don’t: expect dramatic impact will be generated quickly. Instead, give innovators time to experiment within set boundaries. Innovators Start/do: come up with new ideas on how specific problems can be solved. Stop/don’t: embark on a big, expensive Pilot. Instead, follow an innovation framework, like Idea, Experiment, Pilot. Middle managers Start/do: support passionate innovators in their team, e.g. with encouragement…
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Un-barrier-ing
Innovation Leaders helping Innovators I explored earlier what the role can be of a corporate Innovation Leader: to identify/remove barriers for innovation and to manage an innovation portfolio. Below, I selected 10 examples of typical barriers innovators are struggling with and a way how Innovation Leaders (IL) can address each of those barriers (I embedded some references to my earlier blogs). I am afraid of failure IL: Ask leadership to publicly share examples of “good” failure and what was learned from these failures. I am not sure what innovation means (e.g. when the corporation asks “everyone should innovate”) IL: Communicate what problems the corporation wants innovative solutions for and share…
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Frugal Innovation
Innovating for better with less When I started in my role as Innovation Leader in a large Pharma company, I was intrigued by Navi Radjou’s book “Jugaad Innovation“. The term Jugaad means a non-conventional, frugal innovation, an innovative fix or a simple work-around. This kind of innovation was especially relevant for the emerging markets geography I was working in at that time: while resources were limited, innovations were desperately needed. I recently attended a webcast, organized by Innov8rs in which Navi Radjou discussed his new book “How To Thrive In The New Frugal Economy“. His inspiring talk was very relevant for the current economic environment where corporations in all geographies…
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Watch!
Webcasts and Newsletters for corporate Innovation Leaders Because most of us are working from home, I want to share the following excellent organizations that aim to inspire Innovation Leaders with newsletters and live webcasts, in many cases for free. I highly recommended to subscribe to each organization and newsletter to get alerts of upcoming events! In alphabetical order: Disruptor League Offers: newsletter, podcast, blog. Newsletter: Disruptor Digest Weekly – announces upcoming “Disruptor Connection” virtual events and a “Digest” of 6 recent innovation articles. HQ: Cincinnati, Ohio (USA). Lead: Shawn Nason, Lead Disruptor (also CEO, Chief of Eco-System Disruptor of MOFI). My take: Used to be called “Innovation Excellence”; acquired by…
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The case of Bad Failures
Innovation Leaders helping Innovators Failure is a part of innovation. True. However, there is “good” failure and “bad” failure. A “good failure” example is validating a fair assumption and quickly/cheaply coming to the conclusion that assumption was wrong. The Innovator learned something new and can then adapt or discard the innovation. But not all failure is “good”, acceptable or makes sense. Innovation Leaders should help the corporation to avoid these “bad failures”. A few examples: Compliance A critical failure to avoid is one related to unethical or dangerous experiments. For instance: healthcare Innovators should never undertake experiments that put a patient’s safety or privacy in jeopardy. To anticipate unethical behavior,…
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The case of Evaluation
Innovation Leaders helping Innovators The next topic in my series on how Innovation Leaders can help Innovators who have specific challenges, is how to coach potential Innovators to evaluate their ideas. When Innovators come up with their first idea, they usually are not familiar with the Innovation method and how to evaluate success in each innovation phase. This is where corporate Innovation Leaders can assist, e.g. by creating simple, supportive tools. Below are 2 examples of how I guided Innovators with “metrics” as they went through the front end of their innovation journey. 1. Ideation phase What is an innovative idea? It is an innovative solution that has the potential…
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The case of Scope
Innovation Leaders supporting Innovators This is the next topic in my series on how Innovation Leader can help Innovators who have specific challenges. Below, I’m addressing how to help potential Innovators who may think innovations have to be disruptive, radical or breakthrough in nature. “Innovation” often brings to mind images of breakthrough products like the iPhone and disruptive business models like Uber. Employees may feel overwhelmed when they hear the CEO or their leadership state that “we need every employee to innovate”. This is when Innovation Leaders need to act. There are several ways an Innovation Leader in a corporation can guide employees on how drastically to innovate: Organization. Innovation…
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The case for Focus
Innovation Leaders supporting Innovators The next topic in my series “How Innovation Leaders can help Innovators” is about how to focus their innovative energy to impact the corporation. We all know passionate Innovators in our corporations. They come up with innovative ideas and often spend a lot of time trying to convince others in the organization to support them. Sometimes they succeed, sometimes they don’t, sometimes they get discouraged and give up. Giving up typically happens if the company has no clear innovation strategy. An innovation strategy starts with a clear definition of what innovation means for the corporation. If this is not done, there are no transparant ways to…