The case for a lean framework instead
A very effective way to demotivate innovators is to let them fill in 3 forms, present at 4 review meetings and do 5 detailed analyses. Don’t.
Innovators need freedom. Corporations need efficiency. It’s possible to match both. Innovative corporations need both. But at different stages of innovation. The solution lays in using a simple framework, starting with free-but-focused creativity, quick-lean experimentation and then structured assumption-testing pilots.
I’ll illustrate with an example for the initial step in the innovation framework, “free-focused” creativity. This can be as simple as just 3 quick questions:
- What is the business & customer problem the innovator is trying to solve?
- Example: customers do not have the cash flow to pay for a product, so the company cannot sell to them or needs to dramatically lower the price
- Describe the innovation in a few sentences.
- Example: a bank will provide a micro loan to the customer and the company will cover the interest due to the bank, so the customer doesn’t get charged for the interest
- How does the innovation address the problem in 1, to create a win-win-win?
- Example: win for the customer who can now buy the product, win for the company by providing access to the product (and win for the bank who has now a potential customer for their other financial products)
It’s fast and cheap: it takes 5 minutes to do and it costs nothing to the company. If innovators can meet this simple test, they should get support for the next step, a quick-lean experiment to test a few key assumptions.
Of course, assuming the leadership/business teams are aligned with the correct answer to question 1.
As Elon Musk said:
“I don’t believe in process … The problem is that at a lot of big companies, process becomes a substitute for thinking. You’re encouraged to behave like a little gear in a complex machine …”
So, as Innovation Leader, you can help your innovators to ‘stay under the radar’ and protect them from leadership and business teams until they get this first step right.