Corporate Innovation

Foundation

Foundation is quite literally the bedrock upon which your entire program is built.   Its purpose is to orient your organization and support the program — so that the program can, in fact, succeed fully.

Without this foundation in place first, all other elements of the program will unable to achieve their intended objectives — no matter how well they are designed otherwise.   Consequently, this foundation has to be established first — prior to trying to operate the program.

Foundation consists of four elements.   These are:

• Sponsorship, Leadership, & Championship — The imperative that ownership and leadership of the Corporate Innovation Program begins with the organization's senior leadership team and then continues throughout the organization.


• Philosophies & Beliefs — A very unique set of philosophies and beliefs around business and innovation – ones that stand to drive a true hunger for – and pursuit of – impactful new innovation day–in and day–out within the organization.


• Principles & Values — The organization's embrace of certain specific values that acknowledge the role of innovation in driving strategy and living out its purpose – plus unique operating principles that further mirror these.


• Culture & Environment — The very active cultivation of the right organizational culture and environment for being able to nurture and sustain new innovation on an ongoing basis – indefinitely.

We work hand-in-hand with your organization to ensure we get each of these elements firmly established and in place — so that your Corporate Innovation Program will in fact succeed and thrive over the long run, and not meet the untimely demise that so many do at the hands of the status quo and its corporate antibodies.

Mechanics

Mechanics involves the ways and means by which your organization will structure, operate, and govern its Corporate Innovation Program across the organization over time — including its various different structures, roles, relationships, processes, and metrics.

Mechanics consists of four elements.   These are:

• Structure & Relationships — The specific organizational structures and relationships (unique to your organization) needed to facilitate your Corporate Innovation Program and ensure that all the right stakeholders and parties are engaging with each other as needed to make the program work.


• Roles & Responsibilities — The specific roles and responsibilities (unique to your organization) needed to execute your Corporate Innovation Program and make it healthy and productive over the long run.


• Operational Processes & Metric — The processes used to operate your Corporate Innovation Program on an ongoing regular basis, plus the operational metrics used inside the program – including those used at various stages to advance new concepts into evaluation, development, and in some cases deployment.


• Governance Processes & Metrics — The processes used to govern your Corporate Innovation Program over time, plus the governance metrics used to assess and monitor its ongoing health, effectiveness, and impact.

We work hand-in-hand with your organization to ensure we get each of these elements optimally defined (and refined) so that they will work as expected for the organization and thereby produce the needed outcomes, results, and impacts for the business.

Moreover, we work closely with your leaders and staff to ensure they completely understand these mechanics and how they work — so that at all times they can execute them with competence and professionalism.

Financing

Financing encompasses the means by which your organization will properly fund both its overall Corporate Innovation Program and the budgets it establishes for pursuing various new innovations.   This is a critical area of the program, in that without the right budgets in place to operate the program and fund its projects, and without the right methods in place by which to manage those most effectively, the whole program will suffer.   It is imperative, therefore, to get these elements just right if the program is to be able to produce a maximum impact for the organization.

Financing consists of four elements.   These are:

• Program Funding — The allocation of an appropriate budget for operating the Corporate Innovation Program itself – so that it can be operated effectively – including providing the necessary resources for enabling the organization to participate in and carry out the program.


• Pipeline Funding — The allocation of an appropriate series of investment budgets for financing the research, evaluation, development, and ultimate launch of select new innovations for the organization.   This budget has to be sized in accordance with the capacity and cadence the organization needs from its Innovation Pipeline, so as to accomplish its specific goals and objectives around new innovation.


• Budget Management — The specific practices by which the program's investment budgets will be managed to ensure the program is acting with agility and flexibility in response to emerging insights – and by so doing ensure that the right projects are being funded and supported at the right times so as to optimize overall success.


• External Investment — The allocation and management of one or more specific funds for use in making outside investments in external (inorganic) innovation endeavors, such as in startups or new joint ventures, when such is a part of the Innovation Strategy.   Certain of these funds may be managed entirely outside the regular organization, such as with a standalone Corporate Venturing Unit.

We work hand-in-hand with your organization – and specifically with those leaders who will be tasked with owning the financial oversight and governance of your program – to get each of these elements properly refined for your organization, so that ultimately they can be used to produce maximum impact from the program.

We likewise work with these leaders to ensure they completely understand these financial mechanisms and practices and how they are to each work — so that they're able to execute them with complete competence and integrity.

Enablers

Enablers encompasses all of the resources needed to enable your organization to fully engage in and carry out your Corporate Innovation Program.   With these enablers, your organization can understand what corporate innovation is all about, and can then be empowered to properly engage in and support the program – in the ways you want them to – so that the program can have maximum possible impact.   Without these enablers, your organization will constantly struggle to know how to properly engage in the program, and consequently the program itself will suffer greatly.

Enablers consists of four elements.   These are:

• Training & Resources — The provision of appropriate training and other resources needed to teach your workers how to think and act like innovators, and to thereafter give them the times, places, tools, mentors, and other assets they'll need to be able to succeed at innovation.


• Discovery & Insights — The provision of appropriate resources and mechanisms for your workers to be able to engage in discovery and insights-mining work, including research reports to help find currently unmet needs, and future-foresights reports to help discover emerging needs – any of which can represent lucrative new opportunities for the organization to deliver innovation.


• Technology & Infrastructure — The investment in, and provision of, technology tools, like for example creative design software and prototyping equipment, as well as infrastructure, like for example innovation labs, research spaces, prototyping shops, test labs, and more – needed to facilitate good innovation work.


• Networks & Ecosystems — The establishment and use of appropriate support systems around your organization's innovation work – including individual professional networks inside and outside the organization, and relationships with a wide range of partners (your ‘ecosystem’) – all aligned to finding new ways of working together to deliver innovative new value to your markets.

We work hand-in-hand with your organization – and specifically with those leaders who will be tasked with providing, operating, and managing these enablers – to get each of them properly refined to your organization's needs, so that ultimately they can be used to produce maximum impact from the program.

We likewise work with these leaders to ensure they completely understand the enablers they're responsible for managing, and how they are to each be used by the organization — so that they're able to operate them for maximum impact.

Engagement

Engagement is all about the ways and means by which your program's Managers will go about actively engaging the organization in your program – so that each person in the organization has the opportunity to fully engage in the manner(s) best suited to them, and consequently do their part to contribute to the program's outcomes and results.

To do this, Engagement employs of a series of activities and events we collectively refer to as the ‘engagement mechanisms’.   These are each quite unique from one another, and consequently can be used to maximize the overall proportion of the organization that gets engaged in the program (because different mechanisms will resonate with different types of people) – thereby feeding the program's Innovation Funnel with a maximum number of new innovation ideas and opportunities.

To describe the nature of these mechanisms, we refer to people engaging in the Innovation Program as the organization's ‘engine of innovation’.   Corresponding to this, each of these mechanisms will ‘rev’ that engine up to different ‘speeds’ – meaning simply that some are far more intense than others in terms of the amount of work they entail and the degree of possible impact they produce.   Consequently, we cluster these mechanisms into four distinct groups, according to how ‘fast’ they each ‘rev’ that engine — Low RPM / Medium RPM / High RPM / Red Line.

In all, we have curated 22 distinct engagement mechanisms, clustered into these four groups, as follows:

• Low RPM — Communities of Practice / Expert Forums.


• Medium RPM — Speed Dating / Idea Conferences / Maverick Panels / Cross-Industry Innovation Panels / Innovation Mentors.


• High RPM — Independent Research Projects / Ideation Challenges / Innovation Kits / Innovation Workshops / Hackathons / Flash Builds / Design Sprints / Innovation Jams.


• Red Line — Six-Week Innovation Challenges / Innovation Tournaments / 5x5 Team Competitions / Design Challenges / Business Plan Competitions / Captive Accelerators / Joint Practice Sessions.

We work hand-in-hand with your organization – and specifically with the leaders and managers who will be tasked with driving engagement in the program (and thus these mechanisms) – to ensure that together we are selecting the most appropriate portfolio of mechanisms to achieve the organization's current goals and aspirations for the program.

Moreover, we also work with these same leaders and managers to ensure they fully understand the nature of each mechanism – including when and where it is best suited and the sorts of outcomes and results it tends to produce – so that over time they themselves can select the most appropriate mechanisms for addressing the evolving needs of the organization's stakeholders whom they'll be serving.

Reinforcement

Reinforcement is all about ‘reinforcing’ your Corporate Innovation Program inside the organization, and as such involves a set of means by which the program will do that.

What is meant here by ‘reinforcing’ is undertaking certain specific steps for the explicit purpose of ensuring that people – both inside and outside the organization – support and endorse the program wholeheartedly – and will continue to do so indefinitely – so that at all times they give it their full attention and interest and take it seriously.

Doing this ensures the program's ongoing, long-term health – and thus effectiveness – in producing continuous results for the organization, over the long run and without end.

Reinforcement is thus a crucial part of any truly healthy and sustainable Innovation Program – in that it communicates to the organization the value the organization's leaders genuinely place on innovation – and likewise provides the ‘handshake’ between these leaders and the workers that they are all working together toward a common goal — one that produces truly win-win outcomes for everyone.

Reinforcement consists of four elements.   These are:

• Incentives — The use of incentives to appropriately incentive people to engage in the Innovation Program and its various campaigns, efforts, and initiatives – sending a very clear message about the value placed on innovation.


• Recognition — The broad and liberal use of recognition to openly recognize those individuals and teams who have contributed to the program – and their associated projects – in order to build pride in what they have accomplished in the program, and to inspire others to follow in their footsteps and do likewise.


• Rewards — The use of tangible and meaningful rewards to openly reward those individuals and teams whose efforts in the program have produced a significant outcome and result for the organization – with the scope of their reward being commensurate with the level of impact their innovation has produced.


• Public Relations — The use of explicit communications – both internal and external – to repeatedly send a message about the positive impact the program is having on the organization and its markets – and in so doing continuously renewing support for the program by customers, workers, and investors.

We work hand-in-hand with your organization – and specifically with the leaders who will be tasked with driving these activities – to ensure that together we are defining the most appropriate set of activities for your program and its unique goals and aspirations.

We also work with these leaders to ensure they understand the significance of each activity and the many nuanced details they bring (especially with respect to recognition and rewards) – so that over time they can ensure they are using these in the most appropriate ways to maximize the level of reinforcement being realized.

The outcome of our Corporate Innovation work

The outcome, and thus deliverable, of our corporate innovation work is the design of a comprehensive and bespoke Corporate Innovation Program just for your organization — one that reflects the most advanced and progressive practices in this field from around the world, but is yet tailored uniquely to your situation, needs, and aspirations.

This program design – together with our support to implement it in your organization – will empower your organization to significantly accelerate its pursuit and delivery of new innovation, and in so doing become (over time) the true shaping force in its markets.

This design will lay out – in full detail – each of the different elements of our IXA Framework, customized uniquely to the needs and aspirations of your organization.
It will thus specify each of the following uniquely tailored to your situation:

• Foundation — just the right foundational elements for your organization… the right Sponsorship, Leadership, & Championship / Philosophies & Beliefs / Principles & Values / Culture & Environment.
• Mechanics — just the right mechanics for your organization… the right Structures & Relationships / Roles & Responsibilities / Operational Processes & Metrics / Governance Processes & Metrics.
• Financing — just the right financial details for your organization… the right Program Funding / Pipeline Funding / Budget Management / External Investment.
• Enablers — just the right enablers for your organization… the right Training & Resources / Discovery & Insights / Technology & Infrastructure / Networks & Ecosystems.
• Engagement — just the right engagement mechanisms for your organization… the right Low RPM Mechanisms / Medium RPM Mechanisms / High RPM Mechanisms / Red Line Mechanisms.
• Reinforcement — just the right reinforcement practices for your organization… the right Incentives / Recognition / Rewards / Public Relations.

These are all formally documented in a final Corporate Innovation Program Design Report, plus a final Implementation & Deployment Roadmap.

The only real way to develop Innovation Capability and Capacity

Pursuing a formal Corporate Innovation Program – of whatever shape and flavor – is the only real way for your organization to develop the ‘horsepower’ it needs to be able to truly lead and shape its markets through impactful innovation each and every year.

No other approach – including exhaustive sales & marketing, traditional Product Development, and especially dabbling in ‘Innovation Theater’ – will produce within your organization the organizational muscle (capacity and capability) it needs to be able to truly lead and shape its markets.   Nothing else can do what a proper, focused, and intentional Corporate Innovation Program can do — when that program is being led, managed, and operated properly… something that only comes when it has been expertly designed and implemented inside the organization.

So… even if you have a winning strategy in hand, if you haven't also taken appropriate steps to design and implement a proper Corporate Innovation Program – with all the right foundational, structural, procedural, governance, financing, enabling, engaging, and reinforcing elements in place – then odds are you're not going to get very far with that strategy.   Indeed… the two go hand-in-hand… a well-designed Innovation-Driven Growth Strategy and a well-designed / well-led Corporate Innovation Program – working together – are what will truly empower your organization to leave the pack behind and become the driving force in its markets.   Neither alone in isolation is enough.   It takes both, working together, to truly succeed and win in the world we live in.

Strategy X's consultants are among some of the most widely-read, well-respected, and well-known thought leaders in existence in this field.   Together, they've designed and implemented scores of different Corporate Innovation Programs – each one a bit different from the others – and each one producing certain specific outcomes and results unique to the organization it was designed for.   In fact, Corporate Innovation Programs come a wide range of shapes, sizes, styles, and flavors – and we know each one – in detail.   Consequently, we know which one will be just right for your situation.

Drop us a line today to learn how we can do the same for your organization.