Out of hundreds….
Innovative ideas emerge in a corporation in many ways. They can be identified through Innovation Challenges. Sometimes they are generated during innovation workshops. And sometimes they just appear ad hoc. Many of those ideas look exciting. But as Innovation Leader, you do have limited time and resources, so you must make choices. How to choose the ones you should focus on?
This is how I selected innovations I wanted to support: evaluating each idea on 3 criteria:
- Problem focused. Does the innovation address the priority problems the corporation had identified?
- Innovativeness . Is the idea really innovative, i.e. has it never been done before?
- Value generation. Does the innovation have the potential to create value?
Problem focused
- The Leadership Team asked to focus all innovation activity on 3 priority problems: lack of access to our medicines, lack of adherence to our medicines and limited impact of our engagements with our customers.
- When I organized an Innovation Challenge or an innovation workshop, I made sure they were focused around one or more of those three priority problems.
- When a passionate innovator shared an innovative idea with me, the first thing I checked was if it addressed one of those 3 priority problems. If not, I tried to help the innovator to adapt the idea to “fit” in one of those 3 priority problem areas. If that didn’t work, then I didn’t include it in my portfolio (and encouraged the innovator to stay innovative, but come up with an innovative solution that was focused one of the 3 priority problems).
Innovativeness
- My highest interest was in innovations that had never been done before, anywhere. Also of interest were innovations that had not yet been done in healthcare or Pharma. Example 1: robots had been used in retail, but not yet in healthcare, e.g. to engage and educate patients who were getting their cancer treatment. Example 2: drones had been used to transport blood, but never in Pharma, e.g. to deliver vaccines to disaster areas.
- Sometimes, the idea was very good (as it met the other 2 criteria: Problem focused and Value generation) but it was not innovative. In that case, to avoid that the idea got lost, I connected the innovator with the brand team, so they could decide if they wanted to pursue it.
Value generation
- The innovator needed to be able to explain what value his innovation would create, if successful. I typically looked at 3 areas of value: value for the brand (like increased market share), value for our direct customer (usually a physician) and value for the end customer (e.g. patients) or partner (like an IT company or a wholesaler).
- It was important that the value created for the brand was in line with the originally stated Problem (criterium 1 above). To facilitate this connection, I used a “One-pager“, a simple PowerPoint slide that helped innovators tell their innovation’s story, integrating the above criteria.
It’s not only important for Innovation Leaders to have clear selection criteria, but also for innovators to know that we use transparant ways to select and support innovations. Creating a lot of noise about the importance to innovate and then not to be clear about which ones are selected and why, is a very effective way to kill the innovation mindset quickly.
As Steve Jobs said:
“Innovation is not about saying yes to everything. It’s all about saying no to all but the most crucial features.”
So, as Innovation Leader, I selected innovative ideas based on clear criteria and communicated those criteria broadly within the corporation.
More about this topic: How To Choose The Best Idea, by Mukesh Gupta
Please share your thoughts or views below!
More of my blogs on innovation: Wim Vandenhouweele