Musing about who innovates… I often read articles that imply that the Innovation Leaders are also the Innovators. In my opinion, there is a simple definition and a simple difference between the two. Innovation Leaders, as I discussed/defined in another blog, focus on stimulating an innovation mindset in the corporation and on managing a portfolio of innovation experiments (i.e. guiding Innovators). Sometimes they are also responsible to scale successful innovations across their corporation. Innovators are the ones that create innovations: they come up with an Idea, they Experiment, they do a Pilot. If their innovation is successful, they may also lead its scaling across the corporation. There can be some…

Time for innovation One pandemic, the Plague of Justinian, helped to bring down an empire (the Byzantine), because of inappropriate responses. Another pandemic, the Black Death, created a society (Europe) that dominated the world for hundreds of years by triggering innovation, pulling millions of people out of poverty and boosting literacy. The current COVID-19 pandemic poses a critical challenge for many corporations. Innovation Leaders in those corporations have the capabilities and mindset to make a difference: they are experts in addressing the most pressing issues their corporation faces. As always, it’s important for Innovation Leaders to align with their Leadership what specific issues should be focused on. This will also…

Preventing forever experiments All of us Innovation Leaders know examples of experiments that keep going on and on. Sometimes for years. Passionate innovators in our corporation might have a great idea and the best of intentions, but occasionally they just do not come to a conclusion. There are many reasons for those delays: no time due to other priorities set by their management, the replacement of a critical collaborator, etc. As Innovation Leaders, we then help innovators to overcome those barriers, by talking to their management, by connecting them with experts, etc. There is an approach that helps to anticipate delays. It is based on securing management sponsorship and on…

How to be successful as innovation leader  When my company decided to create the position of Innovation Leader, what profile did they look for? Broad experience in healthcare to deeply understand the key issues. At that time, I had 30 years of experience with this Pharma company in sales, marketing, operations and strategy at country, regional and global level. Networks in the corporation to facilitate collaboration. In my previous jobs, I worked closely with other divisions, like manufacturing (e.g. to plan new product launches and to manage vaccine supply) and IT (e.g. to create a global, automated tender management system). Multicultural experience as the job covered most global geographies. I…

Once upon a job description There are as many job descriptions for Innovation Leaders as there are Innovation Leaders. How to create one? It doesn’t have to be complicated. Let me share my story. When “my” leadership team decided to create the role I would take on, they had a very clear rationale. When they visited countries around the globe to review local business plans, they noticed that in many countries local employees came up with innovative solutions for important business/customer problems. Although this was encouraging news, the leadership team was concerned, because they were not aware of all the innovations that went on in their organization; they realized that…

Serialization Counterfeited medicines are a dangerous problem. To help deal with this, a new technology, serialization, can now be applied. It looks like a QR code (see picture above), but contains unique information for each individual package it is printed on. A special reader can scan this serialization code and read the specific data linked to that package like the lot number, the package number, the expiration date, etc. No two packages have the same serialization code, so a counterfeited product can easily be identified. Several regulatory agencies across the globe started requiring Pharma companies to print serialization codes on the packaging of their medicines. Adding serialization codes to every…

Why to define the innovation target well. Horizon 1 & 2 innovations build on the core business. Therefore, obviously, the problems that innovations aim to solve should be related to the core business. If the problem statement is too vague or too broad, innovative ideas to address these problems may not be targeted enough either. How can aspiring innovators across the corporation know the core business problems well enough to come up with a relevant innovative idea? And how can Innovation Leaders play an important role in this? Let’s take a few examples, for different brands. A diabetes brand. The business objective was to increase market share. However, that’s too…

Innovation can even happen with limited budgets What are barriers for innovation? Limited budgets is often mentioned. I beg to differ. I believe this argument is often used as an excuse to stick with business as usual. As Innovation Leader, focused on Horizon 2 commercial innovation, I have guided innovators accross the globe for 5 years and have not observed one failure due to the lack of budget. Let’s have a look at each of the 3 innovation stages and how Innovation Leaders can be catalysts. Ideation. In this stage, the Innovation Leader can help the innovators to clearly define what they want to solve (the problem), how they plan…

Is Innovation a synonym for Marketing?  Is Innovation just a different label for Marketing? Another trend in Marketing? Marketing tactics have always aimed at solving business and customer problems, at creating value and at differentiating brands from competition. Just like Innovations. The above goals are indeed common between Marketing and Innovation, especially for those of us who focus on Horizon 2 level innovation. Having worked in marketing for 30 years and in innovation for 5 years, I believe the key characteristic for innovative solutions is simply “New“. So I agree with Webster’s definition of innovation: “the introduction of something new”. Traditional marketing typically uses best practices, trying to improve those…

Innovation driven by limitation More money = more innovation? Wrong! Based on my experience, I believe it’s often just the other way around. Large corporations typically have many resources to drive business objectives. In many cases, business goals are met by doing more (or more efficient) of what worked in the past. Why take a risk with something new, uncertain, especially when senior leaders have limited expertise with it and you may be blamed for a potential failure? I recall the launch of a new, very good medicine where the marketing team benchmarked the best launches of recent brands. Then they increased each of the activities those brands used with…