Building an Innovation Engine

Innovation is a funny business. We all want it. But if we all had it, by definition, it really wouldn’t be innovation now would it? So, what’s the approach then for being in the small few that not only want it, but actually achieve it? What if we built a machine, a process, a system, call it an engine, that, if properly fed and fueled, reliably produced innovative results?

First of all, let’s take a step back. What challenges do companies face when they’re trying to innovate?

They only focus on incremental changes. 85% of companies say innovation is very important but they don’t actually do it. Instead, 78% of them focus on incremental changes. That is not innovation and won’t drive the disruption needed for them to thrive or even survive. [1]

Their innovation efforts are disorganized and ineffective. Because of their propensity for building rather than partnering or buying, their efforts are ad-hoc and unstructured, there’s a lack of rhythm or structure for ideation, experimentation, development, production and delivery of new and compelling products and services.

Their culture doesn’t support it. Although they yearn for innovation, they haven’t built a culture of innovation across company functions. Their people aren’t grasping the fuel that an innovation mindset brings to creating new products and services. Without this culture, their innovation efforts fail to gain momentum and success.

They’re slow and late to the market. 60% of companies take a year or longer to create a new product and another 25% take two years. Instead of creating disruption, these companies become targets for disruption themselves. At this pace, innovative ideas become stale and possible market leaders become market laggards.

What if you created an Innovation Engine to overcome these challenges? This machine, this team of innovators, this group of idea monkeys [2] is energized, primed to overcome the above challenges in the following ways.

Thinking Big. Despite deep fear and talk of disruption, most companies still focus on the small stuff. They do! They typically  iterate on the status quo in four areas; enhancing existing products and services, improving customer satisfaction, reducing costs, and improving operational effectiveness and productivity. They call this innovation but it’s not. They source their ideas in too narrow a field, typically relying mostly on customers and employees. The Innovation Engine instead focuses on new emerging paradigms with new products and services and puts in place processes that support bigger bets on disruptive innovation projects that have higher risk.

Executing Effectively. Most companies have an affinity for building instead of partnering or buying. This leads to insular views that make it hard for them to visualize paradigms outside their current operating framework. As a result, innovation becomes progressively more difficult as ideas move into development and then into production. This leads to a lack of confidence which is a killer for innovation. The Innovation Engine widens the funnel of new ideas to include innovation consultants, researchers, suppliers, vendors, academia, literature, analysts, accelerators and incubators.

Driving Culture. Innovation doesn’t come easy. By definition, innovation is thinking differently, it’s discovering the future, it’s experimenting and taking risks, it’s being bold in the face of opposition. To be real innovators, companies must build a culture of innovation across every function; HR, finance, sales, product, engineering and marketing. Innovation must be a byword and truly internalized. It needs to be part of each employee’s DNA and second nature so that their work inspires vision that recognizes paradigmatic constraints, discovers the future and brings that future into the present. The Innovation Engine supports the buildout of this culture.

Leveraging Speed. Innovation embraces early movers who move with speed. Discovering the future is all about understanding your current context but reaching as far as possible into the next paradigm and pulling it closer in so that you can be the first in or early in. This can’t be done slowly or with mechanical deliberation. Nor is that needed to innovate. This is a competition. The future waits patiently for whomever gets there first. Speed matters and innovative companies recognize that. The Innovation Engine is a driver for movement, for momentum and insists on the right to be “unreasonable” and to drive momentum that may not be there initially.

How does the Innovation Engine achieve these disruptive results? This depends on your organization, its hunger, its willingness to experiment and its understanding of what it really means to innovate. That said, this is not rocket science! It just takes will, commitment, investment, passion!

• Sourcing For Ideas; hackathons, challenges, workshops, idea talks to spur ideation, invention, experimentation, connecting with industry, academia, visionaries, futurists, authors, children, artists
• Quick Prototyping; fast requests and turnaround, from napkin sketch to clickable prototype or developed concept in days or weeks
• Research and Development; investigation of new business models and emerging technology integration to validate thinking and push the envelope
• Culture; coaching for executives on how to drive innovation, guidelines, experimentation, roundtables, discussions, curriculum, exercises, hackathons, panels
• Ideation; a process for putting rich ideas in your leadership’s hands in a matter of days; the key is movement, getting participants to think with abandon and then refine
• Expansive Thinking; validating innovative thinking, expanding and growing ideas in real time, creating a broad, open landscape that sources “crazy” ideas but then gives them room to gain substance
• Innovation Pipeline; a full blown innovation pipeline that sources ideas and keeps the innovative new products and services coming on a regular basis; the key is richness and volume
• Playbook; an organized series of actions that starts with “twinkle in the eye” ideas and progresses to napkin sketch, slide deck, POC, clickable prototype and full blown deployed product in months
• Innovation Sprints; high performance and quick MVP project delivery that wastes no time in putting ideas into action, deploying them into an interactive landscape where they’re seen and touched
• Platforms; fully developed architectures and platforms that serve up rich data and APIs for multiple yet to be known endpoints (voice, OTT, IoT, XR)
• Products and Services; ideas that are put into completely developed product roadmaps so the end result can be seen with the understanding that change is intrinsic to innovation

In those 85% of companies that say that innovation is very important, it’s all too common to hear about the launching of an innovation “initiative” along with the accompanying hoopla and ceremony. All too often though, these are really just placeholders for “labs” or “idea factories” or firing up the staff so they feel like we’re “innovating” or positioning ourselves well in the market.

The truth is, we stand at the brink of a new age that will gain escape velocity in the 2020s (the Digital Decade). The technology currently converging is mind-boggling: AI, Extended Reality, Autonomy, Voice, IoT, Crypto, 5G.... the list goes on and on. How will corporations have a chance of understanding, implementing, and most importantly, connecting the digital thread that weaves these technologies together? How will they effectively compete and innovate? What’s really needed is a substantive, organizational commitment to a process and a system that thinks big and drives innovative culture with speed and effectiveness. The Innovation Engine does just that!

[1] Many of the insights in this post come from the “CB Insights State of Innovation Report.”, www.cbinsights.com/research-state-of-innovation-report.

[2] Maddock, Mike. Free the Idea Monkey to Focus on What Matters Most, ISB Publishing, 2012.