Upskill your innovation techniques

Innovation Managers - Job of the future?

Yes, but the bar has gone up significantly. Today we can experience quite a dying of innovation centers and the end of many innovation teams. Why? Zero real innovation after 3, 4, 5, and more years of just playing around, experimenting with legos, and dreaming something up. It doesn't matter whose problem it is. In the end, finding a new job is extremely hard. Who should hire an innovation manager that could not show a single success? And when no outcome was generated, even the least experienced employee needs to wonder what is going on. This must be fixed - and must be fixed fast.

THE STAKES ARE HIGH

Globally, only very few Enterprises with more than 1,000 employees have brought breakthrough innovations successfully to market. But that still sets the stage.?Here is what they did:

1) Innovation champions with courage pulled in the CEO

2) The CEO then developed a clear mandate with the purpose of innovation

3) The uniquely assembled and well-trained team made the innovation a reality

4) Funding, go-to-market, and scaling processes were completely out of the ordinary but relentless execution was the path to success.

In all those cases and almost all cases currently at work, the result was a Billion $+ Business unit.

THE KPIs ARE TOUGH

1. Be able to create innovation within 9 months.
2. Get the funding to build the first prototype/MVP/whatever in two weeks
3. Get initial market success over the next 2 years.
4. Go global and scale for the next 5 years to become a market leader.
5. Not your responsibility? Make it yours or get out of the way.

While EVERY INNOVATION TEAM will say this is impossible, there are 1,016 cases that show otherwise.

THE OPPORTUNITIES ARE UNPARALLELED

After founding four disruptive companies myself, two of which reached the billion-dollar revenue range and acquired probably 50 companies and startups, then helped nearly a hundred startups, of which three are on their way to becoming a unicorn, I felt its time to share some of the key learning with others - not only startups. But thousands of troubled innovation teams.

INNOVATION IS A EXTREMELY LARGE COMPLEX

Here are the things every innovation team needs to consider:

1. REVENUE POTENTIAL -- In an enterprise that generates more than 5 billion in revenue, an innovation that is less than 10% of the current revenue run rate is essentially unimportant. Mostly because in this case, a real innovation that only generates 500 Million in revenue on a global scale is not really an innovation.
2. END OF LIFE OR DISRUPTION -- Some of the biggest reasons for innovation is to replace a slowly dying product line, that needs to be replaced, entering another industry because their own is fading away or dramatically changing, environmentally unacceptable production lines need radical shifts - not just improvement, Another reason is when enterprise leaders know that disruption is around the corner, in particular in the financial services industry incl. insurance, health care, pharmaceutical, mobility & transportation, Oil & Gas, Construction, Energy and Food. As an innovation manager, you need to be very well aware of all the problems and challenges in your industry.
3. INVOLVE YOUR CEO -- Every innovation on earth was rather rapidly created but takes 5 years or longer to full acceptance and 0+ years to achieve market leadership. Only a CEO can decide on such a time span to be worked on. As a rule of thumb, an innovation including all growth financing needs capital that is nearly the size of the targeted revenue - meaning north of 100 Million. Only CEOs can make such a decision together with their board. An innovation team needs to have very innovation-specific cognitive abilities. That means they do not fit in a classic enterprise structure of rules and regulations - because they need to be built to break rules and question regulations. Only a CEO can make the decision to establish a respective environment. And if he or she is not interested, grassroots initiatives are the ones then get killed sooner or later, because they are a waste of time and money AND could never work in a meaningful strategic direction.
4. REQUEST A CEO MANDATE -- That is a document that describes the purpose of innovation, the direction the innovation needs to focus on, and the corporate constraints the innovation team needs to consider. Open and free ideation means you can go in a trillion directions - right? It gives you more options than stars in the universe. Moreover, homo sapiens is on average creating 10,000 ideas every year. That makes trillions of ideas altogether. And we still can't get a SINGLE INNOVATION? Something is terribly wrong. The first mistake is zero orientation, with no goal and no direction - therefore you can't end up anywhere or you don't know if where you ended up is even meaningful.
5. STOP HUNTING FOR IDEAS OR STARTUPS -- Isn't it interesting that not a single VC these days is funding even the greatest idea on earth? No - Not One. What do they do then? THEY ARE FUNDING SOLUTIONS. Stop hunting ideas and find one of a trillion ideas - START HUNTING FOR MASSIVE PROBLEMS. Problems that nobody solved because it is too hard, too complex, too much work, and too much thinking. The same goes for the startup hunt. A startup that can be bought for a few million has no real value. The founders with a bold idea and the ability to build a unicorn would never sell. Those who sell are the ones who lack ideas and the necessary ability to get all the way to the top. Top innovation managers take a methodical approach to identify innovation opportunities and then select one problem and go solve it. No alternative in case of and no plan-B.
6. LEARN HOW YOUR BRAIN WORKS -- Ideas, solutions, ways to deal with it, collaboration, communication, this all is done with your brain. And it is far less complicated than you think. Of course, the brain is super complex and you won't even try to understand it in its entirety, But learn how ideas and solutions are composed by the brain and how to build a team of smart, crazy, sharp minds who do too. Then use your newly won knowledge, through all your brainstorming stuff away, and start strategically stimulating your brain for certain activities that lead to solution thinking. No drugs, no brainwash no wires into your neurons. Use the most powerful API the brain comes with: Eyes, Ears, Nore, Mouth, Senses...
7. IDEA VALIDATION -- Take your concept and present it to carefully selected customers. So-called early adopters. Ask them specific questions to find out whether your innovation concept is so disruptive and life-changing that they would pay in advance just to get on the list for early delivery. And with your newly found understanding of neuroscience, you find even ways to get the very future perspective for your product from your customers. When you have maybe a hundred of such feedback, you talk to your CFO to get the funding you need.
8. INNOVATION FINANCING -- I probably spoke with 50 CFOs and CEOs and Chief Innovation Officers, and all told me the same dilemma: We get amazing ideas but can fund only a few. So we fund those we can actually understand and believe it will work. However - mostly they are failures. We are patient but after three or five years of ONLY failure and ZERO success, I guess we are at a point where we give up. Also here, it is the completely wrong approach. How should a conservative, cash preserving and cashflow oriented financial person (any title) get excited by an overwhelmingly motivated visionary to invest in something nobody can understand at that point? As a wise and well-trained innovation manager, you have a financial mind on your team that keeps the CFO in the loop through the entire process and pitches the progress every other week for 2 minutes sharp - no exception - no overtime.
9. INNOVATION BUILDING -- Whatever innovation you came up with build the most rudimentary yet functioning piece with one super important feature - that sows your disruption. Build it within 9 months. Despite that, you will argue that it is impossible, the physics, the chemistry, the rules, the regulations, and all the other reasons why it does not work that fast. You either will like anybody else or go back to the ZERO SUCCESS Club. Sorry for being that harsh. We had baby food producers, medicare companies, and companies with products that needed to fly all the way up to satelies. They finally found ways to get it done.
10. INNOVATION-TO-MARKET -- Yet another daunting task is to get your innovation to market. And also in this episode of the innovation journey are lots of counterintuitive little steps but none is complicated enough that brings you to a halt. A few rules at this point: NEVER give it to your existing marketing organization. There is a 0.000% chance it will work. Then NEVER give it to your existing sales organization. There is a 100% probability that it will not even see the first customer. All the other departments are the same. WHY? Because somebody who works professionally and highly productive in a billion $ company is either a loser and has time to take care of a new thing nobody knows how to deal with, or very successful selling their big deals with zero time for your fancy toys.
11. SCALING AND GOING GLOBAL -- Also here bringing a highly innovative and presumably successful product to market with a multi-billion potential, Imagine you are able to scale from 50 million to 100 million to 250 million to 500 million to 1 billion to 2.5 billion to 5 billion, year after year. This is great you will say. But to finance such growth is an ART. It is something only a very few CFO has ever had an opportunity to experience.

If you think that most of these activities are not your responsibility because after the prototype works you do something else, YOUR innovation will fail and not only the company is disappointed YOUR career has no success to show other than an experiment with zero value.

On June 28 we share lots of details in our Innovation Leadership Knowledge series. You may want to join us: https://bluecallom.com/upskill-your-innovation-techniques/

What do you think? I guess we all would love to hear your thoughts, ideas, experiences, questions, and suggestions.