Many years ago, I did a piece of work supporting an innovation conference in Oxford.
The aim was to generate ideas for social entrepreneurship in the area, and I was one of the facilitators.
We brought felt tips, playdough, coloured paper and sticky tape, and had people rapid prototyping everything from pop-up canteens to new smartphone apps. By the end of the 3-day workshop it looked like a playgroup had run wild (hey, at least we didn't bring glitter!) but the ideas which emerged were extraordinary and the energy was electric.
Theories like Lean Startup or Design Thinking are part of the innovation canon and rightly so. I've seen first-hand the magic that can happen when you take people out of their day jobs and give them a space to just...imagine. It usually goes the same way: people are slightly nervous and awkward (in the UK, at least!). The rules are upended and that feels strange, unnerving. You start with an ice breaker activity, with the inevitable rolling of eyes and a couple of nervous giggles. There's always one person who is 100% invested and ready to GO! Someone makes a joke about how much they hate ice breakers.
Then, if the facilitator is good, you see a slow transformation, as participants move from discomfort to curiosity to enthusiasm and, finally, absorption. You go from generating a couple of half-hearted ideas, to an avalanche of creativity: wild, wacky, unpredictable, inspired (and plenty that are also pants). As you test and refine the ideas that seem most interesting, you can end up - in an astonishingly short time - with a shortlist that is so promising it takes everyone by surprise.
And then...
Turning a dream into reality
Herein lies the problem. As Fayard et al. put it recently, "As studies of hackathons and other accelerated forms of innovation shows, all too often very little happens after the initial brainstorming phase."
If the participants are entrepreneurs, trying to meet the next unsolved customer challenge or address a pressing social issue, they run headlong into the realities of turning their idea into a viable business proposition. But at least those individuals are driven by potential financial or emotional reward.
In companies trying to drive a culture of innovation through such initiatives, the obstacles to success are often fatal to all those great ideas waiting to flourish.
Why innovation fails
I’ve seen five main issues:
Lack of time - innovation workshops are successful, in part, because you take people away from their day-to-day tasks. Unless someone is inordinately passionate about their idea, it's soon going to feel like a drag if they are only able to find time to work on it during evenings and weekends.
Lack of reward and recognition - people are rewarded for doing their day jobs. Unless they are specifically targeted on developing an idea, it's not going to be top priority.
Lack of support - developing a new idea requires backing, both management support and resource. Ideas can wither because senior leaders don't clear barriers
Lack of prioritisation - if you took every idea generated in an innovation workshop to fruition, you'd have far too many new initiatives to focus on. You need a consistent (and fair) method for prioritising a few of the best ones for development
Lack of change management - most ideas will require someone (and often many people) to do things differently. A new product will require Sales and Marketing to understand it. A new business process will need to be communicated and accepted by Operations. Automation of manual workflows will need frontline staff to buy into the new way of working. If you throw a good idea out there and just expect it to stick, you're going to be disappointed.
How does all this relate to Epion?
At Epion, we're NOT innovation specialists, although we've yet to meet a client who doesn’t want to be more innovative, agile, resilient and reactive to macro-economic trends (all of which are characteristics of organisations that do innovation well).
But one thing we do REALLY well is support the execution of strategic change. Ultimately, building and embedding an innovation capability is simply an example of strategic change and turning an idea into reality is an exercise in project and change management.
So what does that mean in practice?
Getting it right
Building an innovation capability includes some standard key elements:
Define what good looks like FOR YOU - you're unlikely to be able to work like a Silicon Valley start-up, and in most cases that wouldn't even be desirable. Innovation requires a more risk-tolerant mindset, which isn't appropriate for many industries. Consider creating a dedicated innovation function rather than a crowd-sourcing mentality for this type of organisation. Funding methodology is another key decision: centralised or distributed, budgeted or by application, it's going to depend on your specific operating model and will need to be tailored to your needs.
Create your prioritisation framework - this should be a 4-box matrix with 'effort' on one axis and 'benefit' on the other (like a cost/benefit analysis). Low effort/high benefit ideas get immediate priority while high effort/low benefit are excluded. You then want a balance of a few (perhaps 20%) high effort/high benefit initiatives, with the rest (80%) low effort/low benefit. These generate quick wins which give you momentum to sustain the slow burn activities. Over time (once you've built trust in the process) you can change the emphasis to more high-effort ideas.
Agree your reward and recognition structure - People will invest time and effort in what will be rewarded, either financially or in terms of recognition or career advancement. Informal kudos is great, but if you really want to build an innovation culture, it must be built into the formal performance management practices.
Appoint your sponsor - All change needs senior endorsement: someone with power and authority, who is well respected within the business. This has to be more than a name check - they should be properly bought into the benefits of innovation and see it as a strategic enabler for the organisation. Their job is to be a cheerleader and remove barriers.
Engage senior stakeholders - one sponsor won't be enough if others on the leadership team don't get it. Building innovation capability is a type of culture change - notoriously the most difficult type of change to enable. You'll need your toolkit of evidence on the business benefits and why they should care, as well as a carefully thought through plan
Communicate effectively - just as leadership need to understand the 'what's in it for me?' (WiiFM), so does every role which is likely to be impacted as the ideas start changing day-to-day working lives. An innovation mindset can be hugely liberating and empowering, generating loyalty and enthusiasm for an employer for relatively little effort, but if you don't engage people proactively, people will feel change is being 'done to' rather than 'done with' them, and you'll get push-back.
Upskill your people - there are lots of great innovation methodologies out there, and many companies have developed their own (Kickbox from Adobe is a great example). If you want to develop innovation throughout the organisation, people will need support understanding what to do differently. If roles, responsibilities and ways of working are impacted by individual initiatives, each of these will need training plans too.
Embed and reinforce - once people see the benefits of innovation, it will likely become a key feature of your culture and one that's deeply attractive to employees (Seacourt is well worth a look for how a company can make printing exciting). However, execution of genuine change is hard and it takes time. You need to anticipate this and invest in getting your people across the chasm to where they can see the benefits.
We need innovation more than ever
Innovation has the potential to transform an organisation, making it more resilient and fit for the future. Given where we are with the climate emergency and global uncertainty, it's more essential than ever that we develop the skills to do innovation well. Too many organisations get caught up in the shiny, new and exciting elements of innovation theories and practice, but it's all wasted effort unless you have the capability to turn all that energy into meaningful change.
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