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…
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Innovation in context
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…
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Innovation Week
Turning a challenge into an opportunity It is critical to share learnings between Innovation Leaders in different parts of the corporation: how do others stimulate innovation and support innovators in their area? In the commercial part of the organization, we typically organized Innovation Summits in each geographic region, which included about 10-12 countries. The Regional Innovation Leader organized once a year a 2-3 day meeting for the 10-12 Country Innovation Leaders. As in all corporations, now and then budget constraints didn’t allow for travel. Skipping these meetings risked creating a message that innovation is not important. One region (Latin America) faced that situation and came up with an innovative solution.…
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A time and place for resources
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…
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Innovation Webcasts
Inspiring and Connecting Innovation Leaders How do good innovations across the corporation look like? Any bright ideas on how I can best stimulate innovation in my country? These are questions I often got from colleague corporate Innovation Leaders across the globe, because these business Innovation Leaders were responsible for stimulating innovation as well as for identifying/supporting innovators in their geography. Their questions generated the idea to create a monthly webcast, inspired by the “TED talks” concept. We kicked off these Innovation webcasts with a few guiding principles: Objective: to inspire and to network (not to generate in depth discussions: those could be done as follow up between interested listeners and…
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Watch the horizon
Degrees of innovation Innovations can be categorized in many ways. One of the most familiar frameworks is the “3 Horizons” from McKinsey. Horizon 1 innovations are about the “now”: existing business models and core capabilities Horizon 2 innovations extend the core capabilities or reach new customers or markets Horizon 3 innovations typically have a longer term view: create new capabilities to build on (or defend against) disruptive opportunities Corporations likely focus on all 3 in a balanced way. In Merck (MSD outside the US/Canada), different teams, sometimes referred to as “innovation engines”, addressed each of these Horizons for commercial innovations. Note: this is separate from the R&D organization’s inventions: innovative medicines and…
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Never done before
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…
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Top down
Securing leadership sponsorship When a leadership team decides that their employees should innovate (more), an Innovation Leader is assigned. Then what? As Innovation Leaders we are thus made responsible to stimulate innovation in a corporation. This is mostly a bottom up exercise, reinforced with a regular top down nudge. Consequently, we must not only engage potential innovators, collaborators and catalysts, but also secure continued strong sponsorship, engagement and support from the leadership. There are several ways to help our leadership in this nudging: Focus. Leadership is about setting direction and making choices. As Innovation Leaders, we should make sure leadership choses a few key business issues innovations should be generated…
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Best of the Best
Innovation Leader characteristics Every Innovation Leader has unique skills, capabilities, experiences, mindset, personality, etc. I’m referring here to those Innovation Leaders who are responsible 1. to stimulate innovation in their country or region 2. to support local innovators through their innovation journey. These Innovation Leaders have (mainly Horizon 2) innovation as an additional responsibility to their regular job. There are desired traits that make an Innovation Leader especially effective. Following are some of my observations and examples from a few selected geographies. Passion and Positiveness. Innovation Leaders in Mexico, Australia Spain, Italy, Canada and Turkey, all busy marketers, developed a full blown “innovation marketing campaign” to create awareness in their…
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Constraints
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…