Innovation Leaders supporting Innovators
The next topic in my series “How Innovation Leaders can help Innovators” is about how to focus their innovative energy to impact the corporation.
We all know passionate Innovators in our corporations. They come up with innovative ideas and often spend a lot of time trying to convince others in the organization to support them. Sometimes they succeed, sometimes they don’t, sometimes they get discouraged and give up. Giving up typically happens if the company has no clear innovation strategy. An innovation strategy starts with a clear definition of what innovation means for the corporation. If this is not done, there are no transparant ways to evaluate ideas, to prioritize them, to resource them, to get sponsorship for them and to scale successful ones.
I have experience with this in two different geographies. In one, the leadership decided to solicit innovative solutions for the 3 most important challenges. These challenges were in common for the countries in that geography (i.e. the lack of access, adherence, customer engagement). In the second geography, the leadership decided to leave innovation more open (i.e. each country to define their own important customer/business challenges).
In both geographies, passionate innovators came up with very innovative solutions. The outcomes were very different, though:
- In the “focus” geography, Innovators knew which kind of ideas had the likelihood to be selected, so they could invest their time in the quality of the idea, rather than in finding a sponsor. Having this focus was especially useful when it came to the back end of innovation: scaling successful pilots. As the challenges were common across most countries in that region, it was relatively easy to get leadership support for scaling those innovations across their countries, sometimes in a slightly customized form. The leaders of those countries that scaled the now “regional” innovations were acknowledged.
- In the “open” geography, customer specific innovations emerged. The guidance which customers/problems to focus on, varied depending on local management. However, it was rare that successful innovations were scaled across the region. The innovations addressed very country-specific business or customer challenges and the leadership of other countries in that region preferred to focus on their own issues, rather than implementing solutions from other countries. The country leaders were proud to show off their own innovations, but not how they implemented innovations from other countries in the region. The not-invented-here syndrome dominated.
Of course, all was not as black and white as I described above. The ‘focus” approach
- required strong leadership. It was critical to have an upfront alignment discussion within the leadership team, a strong communication into the organization and a disciplined selection of innovative ideas for experiments based on the set priorities.
- missed some opportunities. Innovations in non-focus areas got a lower priority, for example process efficiency needs. However, once the employees were familiar with the innovation concepts/principles/tools additional challenges could be added to the regional ones if these kind of challenges were important for local management.
- supported the core. It was especially valuable for Horizon 1 & 2 innovations. The “open” approach generated some more radical innovations.
- was resource efficient. Because of this focus, regional experts emerged. What they learned from earlier innovation experiments helped them to support new Innovators in specific areas. Examples included experts in finance (to support access innovations), regulatory (for medical device innovations) and compliance (on how to engage with patients for adherence innovations).
- was easy to measure. It was straightforward to define metrics, set targets and track the impact of innovation on the business in that region.
- created healthy competition. Early selected examples showed what good innovations look like and triggered an “I can do that also and even better” mindset for new Innovators. Also, country leaders were eager to have their teams come up with innovations that would be scaled to other countries.
As Steve Jobs said:
“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things”
So, as Innovation Leader, I made all efforts to help Innovators by securing specific challenges they could focus their innovation efforts on.
More about this topic: “A Strategically-Focused Innovation Process” by Langdon Morris and “For A More Creative Brain, Embrace Constraints” by Thomas Oppong
What are your thoughts on this?
Click here for more of my blogs on innovation within corporations: Wim Vandenhouweele