Connecting innovation leaders to stimulate innovation
The impact of innovation leaders within a corporation increases if they can share learnings and challenges with colleagues who are also excited to create change.
One of the most practical ways to create an innovation mindset in a large organization is to establish a network of passionate innovation leaders, especially if those leaders are embedded in the business teams and supported by their leadership.
These catalysts can create small “flames of innovation”, which, taken together, can over time generate a major “innovation fire” across the company.
I have seen it happen. I also learned how not to do it. When I started in my new role, I asked every country managing director to assign one person in their leadership team to take on the additional role of “country innovation leader”. In several cases this was an error, as these leaders typically had already too many responsibilities and didn’t have the time to add this innovation role. Also, countries typically chose their leaders based on their expertise in effectiveness and efficiency, not innovation.
Thus, I changed my guidance to country managing directors and asked them to select new innovation leaders based on their passion for innovation. This created magic! Based on our annual employee survey, it was actually remarkable to see the correlation between the improvement in innovation perception with employees and the passion of the country innovation leader in that country, irrespective of their hierarchical position.
We build this innovation leaders network so we could consult with each other, make new connections and identify common barriers to stimulate innovation which we then tried to address together.
Some ways to create, sustain and grow this network included:
- Monthly 1-1 calls, short, informal, typically 30′
- Monthly TED-like webcasts to share practical examples
- Virtual “innovation weeks”, with a daily 2 hour webcast
- Annual 2-day innovation summits, including visits to innovative companies and engagement with leaders from other functional areas
As Ronald Burt said:
“Instead of better glasses, your network gives you better eyes”
So, as Innovation Leader, I made sure that the passionate country innovation leaders were assigned and supported by their management. It was important that those innovation leaders were connected with each other, to share and to learn.
More reading: The ultimate guide to building an internal innovation coaching system.
What is your experience? Please share/discuss below!