Creating a climate that stimulates innovation
When corporate leaders decide that more innovation needs to come from within the organization, many employees need to stop some old habits and start new ones. A few examples:
Leadership
- Start/do: communicate frequently, strongly and precisely about the problems the corporation wants innovative solutions for.
- Stop/don’t: expect dramatic impact will be generated quickly. Instead, give innovators time to experiment within set boundaries.
Innovators
- Start/do: come up with new ideas on how specific problems can be solved.
- Stop/don’t: embark on a big, expensive Pilot. Instead, follow an innovation framework, like Idea, Experiment, Pilot.
Middle managers
- Start/do: support passionate innovators in their team, e.g. with encouragement and time.
- Stop/don’t: resist team members to collaborate with colleagues in other units. Instead, facilitate connections across the corporation and beyond.
Sponsors (Brand teams, Finance,…)
- Start/do: provide incremental budgets, based on stage gates, aligned with the corporate innovation framework.
- Stop/don’t: ask for ROI in the early stages of experimentation. Instead, let innovators increase the chances of success of a future Pilot by validating key assumptions.
Experts
- Start/do: be open to collaborate with innovators from anywhere across the corporation, who need your specific expertise.
- Stop/don’t: focus only on deepening your own expertise, e.g. a technology. Instead, focus on how this expertise can help address a business problem.
Other departments in the corporation that should change their habits to support innovation might include e.g. legal, compliance, HR and procurement.
As Steven Johnson said:
“If you look at history, innovation doesn’t come just from giving people incentives; it comes from creating environments where their ideas can connect.”
So, as Innovation Leader, I identified and worked with colleagues from across the corporation to strengthen or change behaviors that stimulate an innovation mindset.
More about this topic: “15 Things Leaders Should Not Do – if They Want Innovation“, by Paul Sloane
Any thoughts on the above?
Click here for more of my blogs on innovation within corporations: Wim Vandenhouweele