The catalyst

Based on a real story of an innovation leader in a large corporation

There are as many definitions of Innovation Leader as there are innovation leaders. This is about my experience.

The position of Innovation Leader in the company I was working for, was created 5 years ago, because the commercial leadership identified a major challenge. Many innovative experiments were happening across the company, but successful ones from one country were not reproduced in other relevant countries. The reason was that there was often no awareness of the innovation beyond the local entity and no good understanding of the business value of the innovation. So my assignment from the leadership was very simple:

1. Recommend to us (Leadership Team) scaling of the most exciting, valuable and proven innovations being pursued across the organization
2. Stimulate the innovation mindset, so more innovations would emerge

One of my first actions was to organize a global internal competition for the most exciting innovations. The top 3 would receive a “Presidents Award”. I got over 80 nominations within 3 weeks!

This helped to have a critical discussion with the Leadership Team about where to focus innovation on (we defined 3 commercial priority areas).  

Next, I created an initial portfolio of about 15 initiatives. The innovations were selected based on those 3 priority areas and spread over 3 innovation stages (ideation, experimentation, pilot). 

By supporting the innovators moving their innovations through the innovation stages, specific barriers for innovation in the company emerged.

• How to measure success in each innovation stage?
• How to learn/fail fast and cheap?
• How to connect innovators with experts in IT, manufacturing, …?
• How and when to secure the right resources?
• How to keep innovators engaged?
• How to spread a common innovation language?
• How to keep identifying new innovations across 80+ countries?
• How to get middle management support?
• When to engage with legal/compliance?
• How to avoid creating a heavy, innovation-killing process?
• How to get support to accelerate this effort?
• …

I prioritized and sought support to address them, one by one.

Within 3 years, 3 major innovations demonstrated proof of concept and were scaled to over 50 countries. Positive perception about innovation in the organization increased with 10%. Key success factors included strong leadership sponsorship, clear focus on the business priorities and an engaged network of passionate country innovation leaders/volunteers. What do I wish I had done more? Communicate, communicate, communicate, …

As Linda Hill quoted:

“My job is to set the stage, not to perform on it.”

So, as Innovation Leader, I made sure to keep the focus on those 2 initial assignments in everything I did by scouting, supporting, communicating, training, learning, removing barriers, measuring. 

More reading: The Role of an Innovation Leader, by Keto

What are your thoughts, experiences? Please share/discuss below. 

Also, please let me know any innovation related topics you would like me to discuss next. Best wishes for a Happy and Innovative 2019!