How to identify bright innovation stars in the corporation
Of course, they are everywhere! But how to find those stars within the corporation?
I believe there are 3 simple steps to approach this:
- Problem awareness. The potential innovators need to be aware of what problem the organization is trying to solve. The Innovation Leader can play an important role by creating awareness across the organization of the problem the leadership wants to focus on. It takes never ending time and effort to make sure that every employee has a deep insight in the business and customer challenges that need an innovative solution.
- Ceativity. Creative colleagues need to be identified, supported and encouraged. Again, the Innovation Leader can play an important role here, by:
- identifying innovators e.g. by issuing an Innovation Challenge or creating an Innovation Award or through personal calls with country/functional innovation leaders;
- stimulating innovation e.g. organizing Innovation Workshops or bringing together teams from different functional areas;
- putting in place quality checks i.e. making sure the innovative ideas strongly link back towards the original problem statement;
- removing barriers to innovation e.g. complex processes or fear of failure or misaligned metrics or discouraging legal/compliance.
- Passion. This is the most difficult part to assess, especially if potential innovators are geographically and functionally dispersed. How can an Innovation Leader really know that innovators have the capability and persistency to overcome barriers and get their idea through the experimentation stage to a successful pilot? By:
- active listening;
- trying to detect the positive, constructive, can-do energy;
- being flexible to help address changing concerns and competing priorities;
- providing support and connections with complementary experts;
- agreeing on deadlines to avoid never ending experiments;
- recognizing innovators – also through their management.
As Mark Zuckerberg said:
”There are different ways to do innovation. You can plant a lot of seeds, not be committed to any particular one of them, but just see what grows. And this really isn’t how we’ve approached this. We go mission-first, then focus on the pieces we need and go deep on them and be committed to them.”
So, as Innovation Leader, I made sure there was a clear, agreed upon problem statement. I removed barriers to create an innovation-stimulating environment. And I dedicated all the time I could to engage in person or on the phone with those stars who I felt were really passionate to innovatively solve the problem.
More reading: 5 tips to spot true innovators
What are your thoughts? Experiences? Please share below!