What’s on the agenda?
I mentioned in an earlier blog that we established local Innovation Leaders in about 50 key countries. Each of these Innovation Leaders were responsible to:
- stimulate an innovation mindset in their country
- identify innovations and support the innovators.
At least once a year, we invited the local Innovation Leaders for 2-3 day summits to jointly take innovation to the next level. This occurred in groups of about 10 Innovation Leaders per region: Latin America, EU, Asia Pacific, Mid East Africa. We covered both innovation responsibilities. Some topics of discussion:
… on stimulating an innovation mindset:
- Information. What is new from a global (HQ) perspective? Examples: the availability of a new tool or a new sharing platform.
- Inspiration. What are some of the best ways how Innovation Leaders in the region stimulated innovation? Examples: an original innovation campaign or an open innovation challenge.
- Alignment. What are the global and also specific regional business challenges that need to be addressed with innovation? Examples: key regional brands that need focus or unique regional customers.
- Needs. What are the most critical regional barriers for innovation for which solutions should be developed? Examples: guidance on how to fail/learn fast or how to organize an innovation challenge.
- Learning. What do other companies do? Examples: meet an innovation leader in another company (like in Accenture’s The Dock – Dublin, Ireland) or a university (like in the INSEAD Innovation Garage in Singapore) or a start up community (like in the Dubai Innovation Accelerator).
- Collaboration. What are critical innovation partners within the corporation in the region? Examples: invite IT, manufacturing, legal, regulatory, HR, VC colleagues, etc. to join our sessions.
… on supporting innovations/innovators:
- Inspiration. What are the most interesting innovations under development in each region and how do local Innovation Leaders support those innovators in each innovation stage? Example: connect innovators with IT experts when starting the experimentation stage.
- Alignment. How avoid duplication by identifying innovators from different countries that work on similar experiments. Example: innovators in 4 countries were working on innovations for different business challenges, but all included drones: we connected them to share learnings and possible collaboration.
We also made every effort to be as innovative and inspiring as possible in organizing these summits. We changed the location and format every few hours, such as breakfast with a regional leader, sit down session, stand up workshop, innovation center visit, cafe setting discussion, assignment during city walking tours. We engaged with key regional and global innovators, customers, collaborators, marketers, experts and leaders.
As Bill Nye said:
“Everyone you will ever meet knows something you don’t.”
So, as Innovation Leader, I made sure to regularly gather all local Innovation Leaders and align our discussions on our 2 responsibilities. This helped all of us to learn, to be inspired, to network and to support each other.
More about this topic: The Ultimate Guide to Building an Internal Innovation Coaching System, by Pam Krengel from MovesTheNeedle and How to get most out of innovation events, by InnovationLeader
Please share your examples and thoughts below!
More of my blogs on innovation: Wim Vandenhouweele