Driving Organizational Innovation – Roles and Responsibilities Part 1

Say that your organization has decided to embark on a program to boost its innovation capabilities, maybe shift the innovation culture or even try to change the organizational culture. Assuming that you will proceed in a structured approach, you will undoubtedly ask yourself whether you need to assign specific innovation-related roles, and if so – which and how.?

Like good, stereotypically-annoying consultants we offer two pieces of seemingly conflicting advice:?

1. Avoid as much as possible creating a parallel governance structure dedicated to innovation, and steer away from overloading the organization with even more unnecessary bureaucracy;?
2. Make sure that specific innovation roles are defined and that at least some of them will be exercised by full time dedicated associates.?

The first of these two is self-explanatory, I believe. The reason for the second is that if you rely exclusively on part timers and on a generalized motivation among the troops, innovation will simply not happen, since an associate’s “real” day job will always take precedence over their innovation assignment. A mix of part- and full-timers can do the job, provided that a proper structure is put in place and managers throughout the corporate ladder are committed to collaborate with the full-timers and support the part-timers.?

The “correct” or proper structure obviously varies immensely depending on the organization implementing it. Very few organizations that I am aware of implement all the roles in the table below, derived from our cumulative experience in hundreds of organizations, and even those who do, don’t persist with all of them for a long time, mostly because not all are needed as a permanent fixture. In fact, as an organization develops and progresses in its innovation journey, it will tend to need less of a supporting structure, until, in its ideal end-stage, it can completely shed the structure as more and more people innovate in what they do, simply because it is ingrained in their modus operandi and their newly formed thought structures (for a useful definition of innovation, that can help understand what is it exactly that you are driving to achieve, see our post What is Innovation). But meanwhile, on the way to this elusive and lofty goal, here is the perfect, optimal, full blown, often unrealistic-but-still-useful-reference org-tree of innovation governance in a corporation.?

?Again, it is important to stress that:?

1. This is a catalogue of many possible roles, which only rarely appear in the same organization at the same time;?
2. This structure obviously applies to large organizations, often multinational;?
3. Terminology also varies widely. For example, the terms iAmbassador, iCatalyst, iLeader are often used interchangeably with iChampion, iCoach, iManager or even VP Innovation;?
4. The hierarchical level of those holding the various roles can differ, be higher or lower than the level specified in the table, but note that - as discussed in our post Two Blind Spots – one should take care to drive innovation both from the bottom up, as well as top-down, while heeding the most important agents – middle management. The table above reflects this principle.?

In spite of the variability, and the need to adapt roles and responsibilities to the specific organization, we find this list and structure useful, since all of the functions listed have a real and productive role in promoting and driving innovation in an organization. None of the roles mentioned above is make-believe, although they all need to be infused with content and meaning as they are created, and the task is often daunting, given that the person filling them will often be the first in her or his role.??

In Part 2 of this nano-series on Roles and Responsibilities, we will dive into some of the roles mentioned in the table above, discuss characteristics of those individuals who can fulfill the tasks and point out some recommended dos and don’ts when defining and performing them.?