Innovation starts and ends with a clear vision

As the founder of a company that came to market to challenge the status quo within a very traditional space, I have seen good and bad attempts to innovate in many organizations.I’ve seen companies put on a great show about how they embrace innovation and it falling apart as soon as the PR dust settles, but I’ve also see companies do it incredibly well. The difference is that one had a clear vision and the other didn’t. "Vision" is almost as buzzy of a word as innovation is and so I’ll define it how I mean it.

An ? innovation vision ? is a very specific thing you want to invest time and money into understanding and being good at. Now beware... ? In 5 years we want to be known as an innovative company? is not an innovation vision. Again, what I mean is what are the specific things that you want to prioritize innovating in. Of all the things you could be pushing the envelope on, what do you think is either critical to where the world is going? Or, what are the things you feel you have a unique advantage at doing or solving.

For example your innovation vision might be: 

"We believe that personalization is going to be the most important trend in our category. We are going to look for ways to innovate in the areas that help us become the best cosmetic brand in personalization. We are looking to innovate in areas of; CRM, E-commerce and Business Intelligence."

This direction should give you and everyone else in your organization a clear license to ? innovate ? in those areas, a guiding star to point to when their small test bring interesting findings and a clear line in the sand for things they shouldn’t be innovating in. 

This is important because you need your team to find the right opportunities for you as your ears to the ground. Don’t tell your teams you want to innovate, tell them the opportunity you’re trying to uncover and give them a license to experiment freely under your precise vision. They will need that license because innovation takes time and hits many many roadblocks on its way to success.