Jedi Tricks to Deploy Innovation on Planet Large Company

Cue the Twilight Zone theme – Rod Serling voice

“Imagine yourself an innovator, in front of the gates of Large Company.

?You will have to travel through another dimension … a dimension not only of budgets and endless meetings, … but of the mind.

A journey into a wondrous space whose boundaries are that of imagination, passion, and resilience.?

There’s a signpost up ahead: your next stop: you are entering the Discomfort Zone!”

..

If you have tried to push innovation in a large company, you know you are in for a long effort.

On average, the default innovation mindset in a large company can be an incremental mindset.

This translates into:

• Improve what you know.
• Issue many documents, convince as many committees as needed.
• Only plan according to annual budget cycles.
• Don’t upset decision makers with scary projects.
• Absolutely ban giant leaps for mankind.
• Make sure everyone is on board to get to the next baby step.

This is what I call the Least Common Denominator Attraction Field

When it comes to offering a launchpad for a new idea, large companies can be a shapeless blob that sucks your energy; if it can, “it” will keep your project in low orbit or on the ground. ?

The blob has a very strong immune defense system that fires on all guns the instant a disruptive innovation threat enters the comfort zone perimeter.

?A sample of ballistic missiles that come your way (IRL experience):

• We did this many years ago.
• Sure, you can pilot this, but find another site.
• I don’t have the authority/budget/guts (select one or all) to support this initiative.
• Middle Manager (French accent) : "SVP Clouzot should weigh in; but he is really, really busy with ze reorganization right now; I can schedule a meeting next year for you, and budget for it ze year after."
• Let’s run this twenty-thousand-dollar scoping project via our billion-dollar Capital Project process.
• This is interesting, let’s have another meeting with more people.
• To make sure ?everyone is onboard, let’s drastically reduce the ambition and send a water rocket from someone’s backyard instead.
• And finally, the ultimate thermonuclear Sun King deterrent?– we probably need to ask the CEO what they think.

Innovators don’t always help themselves either.

• “I have a great solution and I am certain, putting my head to it, I can find a pain point that it addresses”.
• “What does the scale up of my idea look like? hum – this new solvent process at an industrial-scale will probably require the yearly orange crop of Florida”.

?Fortunately, the Force can be with you and good things can happen to vanquish the Incremental Empire.

?Here are some seven Jedi tricks to (stand a fighting chance to) achieve escape velocity from the circles of Large Company Innovator’s Hell.

?1.??????One shoe does not fit all. Know the client, address their pain point; adapt the pitch; B2C folks have short cycles. If they don’t renew their products, they lose market shares. Heavy-industry folks spend ten+ years to develop a technology; if they get it right, the technology will pay for itself with the first industrial project.

2.??????Use persistent and targeted communication to be as non-threatening as possible and win your stakeholder over– turn up the heat progressively under the frog in the water pan so she finds it cozy and thinks the idea of a bath in lukewarm water was hers (PS unlike in the fable, do not turn the heat all the way up or wait until you are go for launch).

3.??????Do not only round up the usual suspects all the time: choose a hungry assistant professor rather than the established Emeritus Prof. who runs his notoriety business and may give you five minutes of his time after he has cashed your check(*).

4.??????Value Executive Selflessness : Some enlightened Executive sponsors will, at their level, foster innovation and take one for the Company, even if it does not enhance the bottom line of their unit this year. Identify them, they will go up to bat for you if you have the right stuff.

5.??????Build Innovation Playgrounds : these are safe places, fully supported by top leaders, where innovative minds can express themselves and contribute to a collective ambition. They can play around and pick themselves up if they fall off the monkey bars without it affecting their career. ?

6.??????Deploy Incentives – some organization offer annual bonuses to the whole Business Unit for absorbing a novel product. This is brilliant in my opinion (at first, before KPIs get perverted – they usually do).

7.??????Create Product Deployment Squads –Deployment requires permanent teams to take a product to the end users, not a Beta+++ version that gets constantly improved on by the inventor. Rare is the inventor that is also a good finisher – I remember meeting at least one in my 30 year career – the odds are not in your favor. ??

?Innovation is like a bread starter; it takes basic ingredients that are easy to find but not everyone is a talented Chef; it must be started with love, grown, nurtured, cajoled to have a life of its own; otherwise it will rot from neglect, crash and deflate or succumb to sickness …

?..

Cue the Twilight Zone theme again : du du du du du du du

"A sickness known as the incremental mindset. Not a virus, not a microbe, not a germ — but a sickness nonetheless, highly contagious, deadly in its effects. Don't look for it in the Discomfort Zone — look for it in a mirror. Look for it before the light goes out altogether and you get sucked, soul, body and creative juices, into the … Least Common Denominator Attraction Field."

?(*)????Mild but heartfelt apologies to all the renowned Professors in my network. It goes without saying that none of you are like that.?