Innovating under the radar
One of the most intriguing articles I read when I started in my Innovation Leader role was about Stealth Innovation. The authors describe why and how innovators in large organizations can successfully innovate under the radar.
Stealth innovation avoids that new ideas are too quickly reviewed and thus get a “no” by a busy CEO/Leadership. Even if an idea is approved, it may get too much visibility too soon and might get torpedoed by the “corporate antibodies”: it’s easy to find reasons why something new will not work.
Stealth innovation works by getting support from a lower level manager: there are more of them and they have more time (than a CEO) to deeply review innovative ideas. They may better understand the context and details of the problem that innovators are trying to solve. They can then be supportive as mentor and may also be able to find some budget to help with early testing, without attracting unwanted scrutiny early on.
Once the corporation puts an Innovation Leader in place, many of the above barriers should disappear, as the Innovation Leader will take the time to review and support relevant new ideas. Still, as Innovation Leader, I made sure to stay alert for the pitfalls innovators could face. I sometimes helped innovators stay below the radar and secured resources for them until they had enough information to bring their innovation to the attention of senior leaders.
- One example was related to micro financing: addressing patients’ lack of cash flow. Micro financing could help patients by spreading payment for their relatively short term treatment costs over a longer time. E.g.: Hepatitis C treatment was 3 months, micro financing helped patients to pay the cost over 1-2 years instead of during the 3 month treatment period. A micro financing experiment in India had generated uncertain results. So, when a similar idea came up in Vietnam (for vaccines), I applied some Stealth Innovation: I provided the Vietnam team with expertise from the managers from the India team and I got help from a global innovation minded colleague to provide some financial support. When the Vietnam team got their results we shared them with the leadership team.
As William McKnight said:
“Listen to anyone with an original idea, no matter how absurd it may sound at first. If you put fences around people, you get sheep. Give people the room they need.”
So, as Innovation Leader, I sometimes used Stealth Innovation to help passionate colleagues to innovate under the radar to generate more developed ideas, so that they would be better received by our senior leadership.
More about this topic: Stealth Innovation: The Work of the Devil by Alex Short and Stealth Innovation Is Not a Solution by Chris Trimble
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More of my blogs on innovation: Wim Vandenhouweele