Fitting within existing corporate frameworks
Established corporations often follow trends: Six Sigma, Culture Changes, Digital Transformations, Diversity, Social Media, … These trends may come and go, usually when the corporate champion comes and goes. Corporate antibodies are very effective in rejecting something new. “Innovation” risks to be included in this list.
Innovation Leaders should be mindful to avoid this. One approach is to totally and irreversibly disrupt the whole corporation. Another is to integrate innovation in the existing corporate culture and processes and “conquer from within”. A few examples on how the latter can be applied (certainly for Horizon 1 and 2 level innovations):
- Focus. This one is easy. For many reasons, it’s helpful and critical to ensure innovations address the business priorities/challenges. This focus provides a simple way to select innovations, makes it easier to get resources to experiment and increases the likelihood of scaling successful innovations.
- Language. Building on the terminology that is known, used and accepted by the corporation, e.g. an established marketing vocabulary, helps to integrate innovation smoothly. Some new terms may be needed, but creating and training the corporation on a completely new terminology for innovation is expensive, may confuse employees and risks to activate the antibodies. It may even not be necessary to use the word innovation.
- Organization. Keeping the HQ innovation team small helps avoid confusion and bureaucracy. Adding innovation responsibilities to employees with traditional roles like marketing, facilitates integration of innovation in regular business processes. Staying aligned with the existing geographical organization will facilitate regional management buy in and support. The regional leadership team will then also likely provide resources, like for regional innovation summits with Innovation Leaders from the same area.
- HR. Integrate in the established hiring, performance and development processes specific innovation criteria, like questions about an innovation mindset, experience or interest.
- Recognition. Innovation Award Ceremonies can easily be aligned with existing ones, like annual Marketing Award ceremonies. This also reinforces alignment with the business challenges.
- Metrics. Corporations may have annual employee surveys in place. These surveys may already contain questions that measure the innovation climate in the company, e.g. can I come up with new solutions, does my manager supports me if I take a risk. If so, the analysis of these surveys can help identify aspects of innovation that need attention. As these kinds of surveys track responses over time, they also allow to measure the impact of new innovation efforts. And as the survey is already in place, there is no additional cost.
We’re all overloaded, so the last thing we need is another set of tools, more training or new forms to fill in, all of which also risk to stifle innovation. Integrating innovation within our current day to day work facilitates acceptance, alignment, speed and cost.
As Craig Wynett, Procter & Gamble said:
What we’ve done to encourage innovation is make it ordinary. By that I mean we don’t separate it from the rest of our business. Many companies make innovation front-page news, and all that special attention has a paradoxical effect. By serving it up as something exotic, you isolate it from what’s normal. You don’t trumpet your ordinary business. The same has to be true of innovation. For innovation to be reliable, it needs to be addressed systematically, like any business issue in which you define the problem and then solve it.
So, as Innovation Leader, I made every effort to align with existing corporate frameworks and events, especially marketing ones, to address core business needs and limit incremental resource needs.
More about this topic: Inspiring Innovation by Making It a Habit
What do you think: beter to fit in or better to disrupt?
More of my blogs on innovation: Wim Vandenhouweele