Preventing forever experiments
All of us Innovation Leaders know examples of experiments that keep going on and on. Sometimes for years. Passionate innovators in our corporation might have a great idea and the best of intentions, but occasionally they just do not come to a conclusion. There are many reasons for those delays: no time due to other priorities set by their management, the replacement of a critical collaborator, etc. As Innovation Leaders, we then help innovators to overcome those barriers, by talking to their management, by connecting them with experts, etc.
There is an approach that helps to anticipate delays. It is based on securing management sponsorship and on applying a simple innovation framework with time limits. Let me share an example. The Managing Director of our subsidiary in Indonesia wanted to address a specific business (brand) challenge with an innovative solution. After his team defined the problem in detail, we agreed on a few principles and steps:
- The Managing Director committed to sponsor any innovator he would select based on preset criteria. Being sponsor meant devoting time (regular follow up sessions with the innovators) and resources (budget and experts).
- Innovative ideas would be generated in 1 day. This was facilitated during an ideation workshop in which all our Indonesian employees participated (we used the SCAMPER methodology). The final innovations were selected at the end of the day by the Managing Director, based on the preset criteria. In order to have a “good” idea, the innovator (or team) only needed to develop a simple “One-pager“, which included the problem statement, the innovative idea and potential value that the innovation would create for the patients, the key stakeholders and the brand. Creating a “one-pager” took an innovator less than an hour.
- The selected innovators (teams) then got one day to develop a simple “Reverse Income Statement“, which included high level assumptions on what would create value and drive cost. If approved by the Managing Director, the most important assumptions would be tested in an experiment. It took usually less than 2 hours to create this Statement. At the end of that day, the Managing Director and some of his direct reports approved the Statements and committed to provide the innovators with resources, if needed, to test their assumptions.
- Now, the innovators got 2 weeks to perform a quick, qualitative experiment to confirm (or not) those critical assumptions with a few customers or stakeholders and present the findings to the Managing Director. Based on the results and learnings obtained during the experiments, the Managing Director then made a decision about each innovation: to stop the innovation or to allow the innovator to reiterate the experiment (within another 2 weeks) or to give the go ahead and support a full Pilot.
- That full Pilot was then developed and executed within strict timelines and evaluated on specific outcome metrics. If the original innovator was not able or not qualified to lead the Pilot, another group, like a brand team, was asked to take over at this stage.
The Indonesian Innovation Leader facilitated this approach with support from the Asia-region Innovation Leader and our global team. The above described approach anticipated two common reasons for avoidable delays: no management support and no agreed upon decision points.
Note that in some cases, it is OK to let a few innovators “play” and let them take the time to get results. I’m thinking of Horizon 3 level innovations that use emerging technologies like drones, robots or blockchain. These technologies are still under development themselves and are often impacted by an outdated or evolving regulatory environment. The Indonesian case study above focused on Horizon 1 & 2 innovations.
As Benjamin Franklin said:
“You may delay, but time will not.”
So, as Innovation Leader, I guided innovators, managers and Innovation Leaders on how to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of innovation across the corporation by using the above simple framework/tools and by setting milestones/deadlines to move innovations through this framework.
More about this topic: What is a Google Design Sprint? by Nicolas Bry
What do you think works best to accelerate the development of innovations in a corporation?
More of my blogs on innovation: Wim Vandenhouweele