Sharing and benchmarking innovation practices across industries, with peers, in real time, is a competitive advantage. Organizations spend billions each year maintaining relevance with their customers, employees, investors, vendors, and constituents. Losing relevance can be a punishing experience and in some cases lead to organizational decay.
Innov8rs CoLab provides the platform for senior innovation leaders to benchmark the practices that work and don’t work. Innovation inherently is an ambiguous practice - if you poll 100 people and query them about what innovation is you’d be guaranteed to get 100 different responses. Reducing uncertainty is one of the top priorities for innovators who have been tasked to create the future of their organization, therefore understanding what others are doing and how they are doing it is critical. Otherwise, the risk of falling into irrelevance increases and that can take years to regain, if it’s even possible. Ask MySpace.
Innovation leaders are often tasked with leading new initiatives. A recent development in this regard is innovation teams who are responsible for standing up and leading new sustainability initiatives. A large, well known, multi-national, technical apparel brand reflects this trend. Their innovation team is now responsible for standing up a new sustainability initiative driven by requests from their customers. Not only are they responsible for creating the structure and organization for sustainability efforts across the company, but they are also expected to continue leading product innovation and corporate innovation efforts. This is quite typical in organizations that don’t know how to properly structure their new efforts so they ask the innovation team to stand it up.
According to our research approximately 30% of the Fortune 500/Global 2000 have proper innovation functions. We qualify this with a requirement that each of these organizations, at minimum, is making a meaningful and material investment into innovation efforts. Double clicking into the 30% we also identify less than 10% that are reliably, repeatedly, and dependably producing new innovations. This represents a threat and a tremendous opportunity.
The majority of Innov8rs CoLab (i8CoLab) members are either standing up innovation functions for the first time or are renovating innovation efforts due to poor or underperformance. In one such case, the largest law firm in the western United States, turned to i8CoLab to secure support from members in their effort to introduce innovation into their organization for the first time. Their goal was to learn how peers were setting up innovation functions and a deeper understanding of what worked and what didn’t.
One of their first moves was to present their innovation challenge, introducing innovation into the organization for the first time, to our membership. This challenge is quite common among member organizations. Collaborating with a newly formed subsidiary of a Fortune 500 food manufacturer, i8CoLab worked with the c-suite and senior leadership to imagine what innovation as a new function would look like in the new organization. The residue, both productive and counterproductive, was apparent during our kickoff meeting when we discussed how best to proceed.
New ideas surfaced such as placing the responsibility of the innovation function within the c-suite, a practice used by the best of the best. On the other hand, the decision was taken to democratize innovation and disperse efforts across the organization. When everyone participates in innovation the function is diluted. Fortunately, i8CoLab members were able to share their experiences ‘democratizing’ innovation and the difficulties this action caused.
Peers working with one another to avoid common pitfalls and past failures is a competitive advantage. The simplicity of peer benchmarking can save precious time, energy, money, and lost opportunities. The elegance and low cost of peer benchmarking reveals its utility when designing and crafting new innovation strategies.
A large telecommunication group joined i8CoLab to refurbish their innovation function under new leadership and operationalize their new strategy. Although the innovation function was well established prior to new leadership assuming control, it was underperforming. The first task in our work plan with our new member was to assess the current situation to determine the most effective path forward.
The assessment revealed strength within new technology initiatives although a gap existed when operationalizing new concepts. Therefore new approaches were created to ensure the early development work wasn’t compromised during the go-to-market phase. We worked on creating champions and proper hand-offs as the various initiatives moved from the lab to customers. Maintaining continuity through the development of new innovation initiatives is crucial for ensuring long term success. Without champions and leaders, innovation initiatives can get lost and lose momentum. Not only that, precious resources are lost that ultimately taint future innovation initiatives.
Collaboratively, the telecom organization designed a stage-gate approach that matched the needs of the initiatives at each phase. For instance, we created roles and responsibilities that reflected the skill sets required during development. Creative mindsets were favored during the early phases while commercialization skill sets were required during the latter, go-to-market phase.
Iterating on this structure and process over the course of time allowed the organization to tweak and improve as more projects moved through the innovation system. This significantly increased efficiency and ultimately allowed the innovation team to move on to other challenges while others led and managed the innovation process. A move quite common among the most productive innovation teams.
Corporate Innovation teams are tasked with a wide range of responsibilities, a form that’s not reflected within other organizational functions. Innovation teams are often asked to lead initiatives that are well beyond their skills. Utilizing a growth mindset is a required skill when leading and serving on innovation teams. Using the example of sustainability and ESG above, we are noticing a trend among large organizations where innovation teams are being tasked to stand up sustainability functions. When the time is right, they will hand off the function to new leaders although the design, crafting, and management of the function is left to innovation teams.
Typically, innovation leaders have a generalist skill set and are asked to acquire new knowledge to deliver against corporate objectives. A growth mindset includes adaptability, creativity, human centered design, and the ability to cope with high levels of uncertainty. These untraditional skills are typically cultivated through a broad base of unique experiences that reflect the unique characteristics of each individual innovation team member. We’ve noticed relevant technical skills from a specific industry are an added benefit but not necessarily required.
Skill sets are a critical component of any innovation team as is the knowledge of technology adoption. With technology as a central tool for any organization coupled with the speed of new applications coming to market, it’s virtually impossible to follow each new trend and development. But working with peers to understand options in the context of your organization and industry and unique innovation challenge is invaluable.
Recently, an i8CoLab member presented their unique innovation challenge to the group. The organization is a large resort operator grappling with the challenge of adapting to new technology tastes from an emerging and important customer segment. This customer segment is technology centric and values continual and uninterrupted connectivity, a gap in the resort’ technology stack.
Our member presented this challenge to the group during the working session. The session was hosted at one of the largest technology distributors in the Fortune 500. The innovation challenge revolved around digital transformation and connectivity. This expertise was on offer from several other members in attendance. The group was able to provide immediate and highly valuable feedback that allowed for a plethora of innovation challenge solutions to be discussed and ultimately implemented.
The innovation challenge discussed ended with a set of new solutions that were able to be implemented immediately. Not only did the participants walk away with solutions, they had expert partners in i8CoLab members who were to help and support one another. These new partnerships emerged from our working session where trust, collaboration, and professionalism fueled future engagement.
These peer-based, benchmarking conversations are cultivated on a daily basis among our membership. Members intimately know what other members are focused on and can serve as their ‘innovation scouts’. They can be called upon at a moment's notice to provide insights, solutions, and support as we all look to lead our innovation agendas.
There are many different types of expert help available in the marketplace. Consultants, subject matter experts, advisors, and many, many more. Our focus is on facilitating collaborations and peer-based benchmarking so our members can hear directly from others who are ‘in the ring’ and have come before them. Learning from practitioners who have faced and solved similar innovation and growth challenges presents a unique competitive advantage to our members.
About Innov8rs CoLab
Innov8rs CoLab is a private, by invitation only, no competitors allowed peer group of Chief Innovation Officers and senior innovation, R&D, and venture leaders. Our members gather frequently and collaborate often to ensure they are advancing their individual and collective innovation growth agendas. Sharing and benchmarking corporate innovation management best practices, connecting to opportunities and resources, and building enterprise value is the primary agenda of our working group.
For more information regarding Innov8rs CoLab membership, please contact Thomas Knoll at thomas@innov8rs.co.