Innovation Organization

Innovation Organization Model
Building and scaling an innovation organization

Innovation Framework

Before you even start

Why should you care before you even see an initial result?

There are some profound considerations to be made BEFORE we even look at first innovation opportunities.

An enterprise with thousands of employees is managed most successfully when repeatable processes are adopted and supported well. Questioning those processes and continuously experimenting with different options would bring the enterprise quickly to its knees. Innovation teams, however, need to question everything and anything and start from scratch – as if nothing exists. An innovation-specific organization structure that can operate independently must be found.

When innovation centers were initially set up, they were a group of people who were tasked to create ideas and build innovative solutions. Little was known about how those ideas get created and how they should be turned into innovative solutions; the team was left in a vacuum. Whatever the outcome was, it was produced, marketed, and sold in the existing organization. But that entire approach failed across the line. Engineering, sales teams, marketer, and production teams, would have to be trained in this radical new solution.

Organizational Perspective

Perspective in an Innovation Organization

Getting realistic

You won’t start an innovation effort with the mindset that it will fail. Instead, your decision to engage in innovation is that you trust it will create an exceptional outcome and make a difference in the market.

Moreover, based on all the discovery from neuroscience, we can assume that a breakthrough innovation is more likely to succeed than fail.

With that in mind, you will ask yourself how the organization could evolve over time. Wait and see is a bad strategy. If you envision it will be a Billion Euro operation that changes the market, you should also envision how it can get there and what would be the most likely roadblocks. You would not have an innovation department if your existing organization could do that in parallel to what they do today. Either the existing organization is badly managed, or the innovation vision does not exist yet.

Incubation & Hatch

An opportunity for a new organization may also need a new leadership

During the incubation phase, the innovation team is busy building a solution in a rather unconventional leaderless organization. Everybody on the team is a leader and does not need to be told what to do. When entering the market, the team needs to grow and build new leadership structures. Also, the investment will grow, and the team leader may become the CEO of this business and build a corresponding leadership structure. He or she will most likely report to the Chief Innovation Officer of the mother company.

IP Considerations

Some general Intellectual Property Considerations

Even without Innovation in mind, IP is a big deal in many larger corporations. In general, there are two factions: one that want to protect anything, the other that doesn’t care and trust their ability to always better than the competition. And anything between those two. As such there is no established principle for IP in innovation. The only exception is that there must be clarity between team members, external stakeholders and the company. In particular if the company conducts open innovation programs, all participating parties need to have an understanding and agree to what the understanding is by stating their agreement. How those is done very much depends on the respective local law and how the corporate council wants to handle it.

Organization Leadership

Leadership in an Innovation Organization

An opportunity for a new organization may also need a new leadership

Stakeholder Management

There are more stakeholder than experts experimenting.

Innovation is done by teams. Within their organizations, the stimulation comes from various sources, such as opportunity identification in the market, needs and dreams of customers, and, equally important, the corporate strategy and the long-term needs of a corporation. Important stakeholders include customers, business partners, suppliers, and internal stakeholders such as executives, board members, and shareholders. Innovation success requires all stakeholders to support the engagement over a time period of at least three years. To do so, all stakeholders need to be engaged on different levels. Customers need to provide inputs and validate the results. Partners and Suppliers need to validate business models and organizational innovation aspects, Executives and board members need to understand that the innovation effort is in alignment with the corporate strategy. Shareholders need to help by leveraging their influence and network to further amplify the go-to-market effort.

Organization Structure

What it really means

A good way to structure the first innovation project is to put a team of 5 – 7 innovation managers together and start inside the existing organization with unique organizational privileges. It must be separated from all the general rules and regulations, particularly salary and operational arrangements. In western countries, HR and possibly the union need to be involved. A unique motivation and compensation schema needs to be established, and unique 24×7 access to the team’s facility or alternative facilities should be provided.

It is much easier to hire dedicated teams for the new solution. Alleviating the trap to limit any business aspect for the new innovation, it makes sense to create a dedicated strategy for dealing with innovation across the entire innovation life cycle.

RESOURCES

WHITE PAPER

The BlueCallom Corporate Innovation Framework white paper covers all five innovation framework groups and its over 100 different features. The white paper will be roughly 50 pages.
Estimated availability March 2023.
You can order it now and get it delivered as soon as it is available.

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FRAMEWORK TRAINING

BlueCallom offers a two-day Innovation Framework Training covering all aspects the framework. It will explains why and how a framework is of critical importance and significant help in creating genuine breakthrough innovation.
The next training is on March 21-22, delivered as instructor-led online training.
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TRAINING INTRO WEBINAR

If you are interested in learning more about the Framework training, meet the speakers, how it is delivered, join one of the two intro webinars with ample time for Q+A or individual calls after the call.
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BlueCallom Inspire

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