Four Lenses of Corporate Innovation
Innovation as a Holistic, System-Wide Journey
Over the years, I’ve partnered with large organizations grappling with the complexities of innovation. Their leaders understand that making innovation work is not optional — it’s a matter of survival. Yet, despite setting up innovation labs and venture arms, many of these efforts fall short. It just isn’t clicking.
Through my experience, I’ve learned that innovation is a holistic, system-wide endeavor that requires orchestration across the organization. I’ll share these insights from four key dimensions: the organizational structures that foster innovation, the processes that propel it, the products shaped by customers, and the people and culture that sustain it.
1. Organization Structure
Ambidextrous Organization
Organizational ambidexterity, or the ambidextrous organization, refers to a company’s ability to simultaneously exploit existing business while exploring new opportunities.
This dual focus involves structuring the organization into two distinct units: one concentrates on optimizing core business operations (“the right hand”), while the other is dedicated to innovation and developing new ventures (“the left hand”).
Designed to drive growth and adaptability in a rapidly changing market, this model aims to balance efficiency with innovation. However, many companies struggle to realize their full potential due to implementation challenges.
※ Reference video: https://agile-od.com/mmdojo/11680/ambidextrous-organizations-explained
???? Challenges in Practice
Common pitfalls of ambidextrous organizations in practice include:
?? Alternative Organizational Design
While ambidextrous organizations can be effective, alternative approaches exist. Setting up such an organization is often expensive and disruptive, requiring significant changes to the organizational structure. A more practical approach involves educating employees and establishing ways of working that separate concurrent “business as usual” work from special projects.
In this model, employees assume dual roles when opportunities arise, balancing their regular duties with involvement in special projects. Management must ensure fair allocation of time between these responsibilities, empowering employees to contribute to innovation without excessive personal sacrifice.
A key success factor in this dual-role approach is education. Innovation work requires a different mindset and skill set. Before “throwing them into the deep end,” it is crucial for stakeholders to understand that people need opportunities for training prior to tackling their innovation project challenges.
2. Innovation Process
Lean, Agile, Design Thinking
Expecting innovation to happen while running business as usual is wishful thinking. Leaders with foresight recognize that innovation must be treated as a distinct activity, separate from daily operations, and requiring different approaches. Lean, Agile, and Design Thinking are such approaches that have emerged from decades of innovation efforts.
?? Lean
Lean thinking originated from Toyota’s Total Quality Management (TQM) system, focusing on eliminating waste and maximizing value. It emphasizes continuous improvement and respect for people.
Eric Ries’s Lean Startup applies these principles to entrepreneurship, advocating rapid experimentation, iterative product releases, and validated learning to quickly test business hypotheses and adapt to market needs.
※ Reference video: https://agile-od.com/mmdojo/1474/lean-leanmanufacturing-leanstartup
?? Agile
Agile is a way of working that emphasizes adaptability, collaboration, and incremental delivery. Originally crafted for software development, it now applies across industries to break complex projects into manageable iterations, fostering flexibility and responsiveness to customer needs. Agile’s iterative nature ensures that learning and feedback are built into every stage.
※ Reference video: https://agile-od.com/mmdojo/9478/agile-101
?? Design Thinking
Design Thinking is a human-centered approach that starts by empathizing with users. It involves defining the problem, ideating broadly, prototyping potential solutions, and testing them with real users. This iterative cycle provides deep insights into user needs, driving effective solutions that are both desirable and feasible.
※ Reference video: https://agile-od.com/mmdojo/10072/welcome-to-design-thinking
?? Why They Matter
Lean, agile, and Design Thinking are powerful alternatives to the traditional waterfall approach, which follows a linear, deterministic path and is suitable for predictable projects where certainty is high. Innovation often operates where certainty is rare.
The Cynefin Framework differentiates between simple, complicated, complex, and chaotic problems. Waterfall works in simple and complicated domains — where the steps are well understood — but in complex domains, where uncertainty is high, a non-linear, iterative approach is required. Lean, agile, and Design Thinking excel in these complex domains, using incremental experiments to make sense of the unknown and iterate towards a solution.
Innovation is about discovery and breakthrough, requiring critical thinking and the ability to navigate ambiguity. Lean, agile, and Design Thinking activate these capabilities by encouraging iterative learning, customer-centricity, and rapid prototyping. By embracing these approaches, organizations can foster a culture of innovation that is better equipped to tackle complex challenges and create meaningful value in today’s fast-paced, uncertain business environment.
3. Product & Customer
? Project vs Product: Why the Distinction?
Shifting from business-as-usual to a special projects approach is a significant step toward fostering innovation. However, we can push further by transitioning from project management to a product development mindset, focusing on long-term value creation.
When projects are considered “special,” it’s a positive step. The challenge, however, is that even special projects tend to regress into operations mode over time — especially in industries where project-based work is the norm, like software development and consulting.
The product development mindset emerged to counter this challenge. It emphasizes ongoing value creation for customers, rather than just completing individual projects.
?? Project vs Product Management: What’s the Distinction?
Project management focuses on delivering specific outputs within fixed timeframes and constraints. It defines scope, manages resources, and ensures on-time, on-budget delivery. Success is measured by meeting requirements and deadlines.
Product management, on the other hand, centers around creating valuable solutions for target customers. It emphasizes continuous learning and iteration, focusing on outcomes rather than outputs. Value creation continues throughout the product lifecycle, promoting long-term thinking.
Product management goes beyond execution; it aims to solve real customer problems and deliver lasting value. This makes it a powerful driver of sustainable innovation.
?? The Broad Definition of “Product”
You might think, “Well, we’re doing an internal project, not building a product to sell to a customer,” or, “Our project is a service, not a physical product.”
I favor the broad definition of a product from Agile Scrum Guide:
A product is a vehicle to deliver value. It has a clear boundary, known stakeholders, and well-defined users or customers. A product could be a service, a physical product, or something more abstract.
Developing a new internal process? That’s a product because it creates value for your internal customers. By thinking this way, you can apply the product mindset to almost any value creation activity.
?? Because it’s All About the Customer
The product mindset keeps the customer at the center of every decision. It focuses on creating and sustaining value, ensuring that what is developed is continuously improved based on customer needs and feedback. This approach is essential for innovation — only products that provide true value will be used. Developing non-valuable solutions is futile; innovation succeeds only when it resonates with customers and addresses real problems.
By embracing a product mindset, companies move beyond the one-off nature of projects and build a culture of sustained innovation, where customer needs drive every decision.
4. People & Culture
Critical Thinking, Ownership, and Accountability
Ultimately, it’s who over what, who over how. However great your company has assets, technology, money, and infrastructure, if your people aren’t “activated,” innovation won’t occur.
In fact, this is the essence of Clayton Christensen’s Innovator’s Dilemma. Large incumbents, despite serving current customers well, lose their edge to new entrants. Why? Because the underdog is hungry and desperate. They compensate their lack of resources with drive.
And what is that drive? It’s critical thinking, ownership, and accountability.
?? Critical Thinking
Critical Thinking in corporate innovation means breaking away from the status quo by asking, “What if?” and “Why not?”
This involves encouraging experimental thinking, embracing productive failure, and fostering diverse perspectives — cultivating a culture of curiosity and risk-taking, two essential values lacking in many organizations.
※ Reference video: https://agile-od.com/mmdojo/9975/non-linear-thinking
?? Ownership and Accountability
Ownership in corporate innovation means employees treating company challenges as their own. Embracing ownership turns them from passive executors to active contributors, with a strong sense of agency, pride, and personal investment.
The challenge is that ownership can’t be imposed — it must come from intrinsic motivation. Leaders need to genuinely delegate and empower, not just in form or as lip service, which means relinquishing control over decision-making.
A further challenge is that leaders want employees to take ownership but struggle to let go of control. They want employees to have autonomy yet maintain oversight. This is where the concept of accountability becomes crucial.
Accountability is the readiness and capability to take ownership of one’s actions, decisions, and the outcomes they lead to. In other words, ownership accompanied by a strong sense of personal responsibility over decisions, actions and consistent follow-through on commitments embodies the spirit of accountability.
Meanwhile, although accountability can be imposed, it often proves ineffective. Imposed accountability weakens ownership by depriving people of their sense of agency. Cultivating effective accountability is a collaborative effort between leaders and team members, built on transparent communication, trust, and a shared understanding of objectives.
Finally, it’s important to distinguish between ownership and accountability, though they work hand-in-hand. Ownership means taking initiative, while accountability means answering for results. Together, they spark creativity and provide structure.
※ Reference video: https://agile-od.com/mmdojo/15417/accountability-culture-shift
Role of the Leader: Systems Integrator
Efforts concentrated in any of these four dimensions — organizational structure, innovation processes, product and customer focus, and people and culture — yield limited results if they operate in silos. A concerted, synchronized effort across all these dimensions is essential.
That’s where the leader becomes crucial — as a systems integrator, orchestrating collaboration and alignment across all boundaries. By harmonizing these elements, leaders create an interconnected environment that not only supports continuous and sustainable innovation but also embeds it deeply into the organization’s identity.