Three keys to successful innovation
Innovative corporations encourage employees to experiment, especially those employees who have a valuable, innovative solution for a key business/customer problem. How do new-to-innovation corporations get their people to come up with the right ideas and to experiment?
Traditional approaches to change management usually mean major organizational efforts: all employees are retrained and “reset”. Innovation is different. Not everyone in a corporation must innovate. But everyone with the right idea should have the opportunity to innovate. And everyone must be open and supportive for innovators. Innovation is stimulated by creating a different mindset in the corporation.
It’s important to keep the way innovation is managed as lean as possible. Innovators are typically employees with already a full time job, who have come up with an idea they are passionate about. A complicated process may discourage them. Establishing an innovation structure can be very simple; the 3 key players are:
The Leadership
⁃ Who: this can be the CEO. Or a passionate believer in innovation, as high as possible in the corporation. In my case it was the Commercial President, responsible for the core business across the globe.
⁃ Role: defines the priority problems/areas innovators should focus on. Also communicates the importance of innovation into the corporation, recognizes innovators, supports the Innovation Leader, asks other teams to support (IT, HR, Compliance, Manufacturing,…)
The Innovation Leader
⁃ Who: can be one person. Or a team, but I recommend to keep it as small as possible to limit unproductive processes and to simplify communication. In my case: I was the global innovation leader (with one support) and each country had a local Innovation Leader. We later added one Regional Innovation Leader for each geographical region, 5 in total.
⁃ Role: manages a portfolio of innovations and stimulates an innovative mindset across the corporation. Also connects innovators (see below) with experts who can help the innovator with complementary capabilities. The Innovation Leader brings successful innovations to the Leadership with a scaling recommendation.
The Innovator
⁃ Who: can be anyone in the corporation who is passionate about the solution they came up with. I noticed that most innovators were marketers in a country, with a deep understanding of the business issues and customers. This could also be someone in Sales, IT, Manufacturing, Medical, etc., who was then quickly connected with a marketing colleague to ensure business/customer focus and engagement.
⁃ Role: comes up with “good ideas”, i.e. ideas that address priority business/customer challenges. Then the innovator does a quick experiment. After this, they can take their innovation further into a Pilot or hand it over to a team.
There are of course many other departments of the corporation that need to be activated to make innovation successful, think Compliance to secure Innovators stay within regulatory and ethical boundaries, Centers of Excellence to scale successful innovation pilots, etc. However, if the above 3 pieces are in place, the chances of creating an innovation mindset in the corporation are in very good shape.
As Albert Einstein said:
“If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got.”
So, as Innovation Leader, I made sure to uphold/keep an eye on the innovation mindset in the organization, including by monitoring sustained engagement from the Leadership and by being in close contact with Innovators.
More about this topic: Leadership and innovation, by Joanna Barsh, Marla M. Capozzi, and Jonathan Davidson from McKinsey
Please share your thoughts!
More of my blogs on innovation: Wim Vandenhouweele