THE INNOVATION MIX
When I’d spent a number of years working in corporate marketing and driving a community of innovators (this was in the days when innovation was a thing you did on top of your day job), I sat down and captured my version of a recipe for fostering innovation in a large organisation. I called it ‘The Innovation Mix’ and my take on things was that innovation initiatives needed to start with giving people the toolset and mindset for thinking differently. Contrary to popular belief, I think that corporate innovation initiatives work best bottom up — not top down.
Contrary to popular belief, I think that innovation works best bottom up — not top down.
The impetus in innovation comes not from telling people to ‘go think outside the box’ or from claiming that innovation is “in our DNA” (I cannot count the number of times I have seen that in an annual report!) but rather, from giving each person the means to generate robust ideas and take them to market (Method) as well as the culture to ensure that innovation can thrive (Mindset).
When I launched my own practice in 2015, I turned this mix into a model that I called ‘The Innovation Wheel’. To test the hypotheses of my little model, I would ask clients 12 questions which sat under 4 quadrants (the 4Ms) that I see as essential to the recipe: Method, Mindset, Mandate & Momentum. These categories enabled me to explore each person’s perceptions or their organisation’s performance in terms of processes, skills, courage, resourcing etc. That gave an indication of what each client was getting right and what were the ‘hot spots’.
At the beginning, I would get out 5 coloured textas (red, orange, yellow, green and blue). I’d ask each question and then colour in accordingly. I was always struck at how infrequently I reached for the blue and green… Highlighting my key ingredients exposed common problems in innovation initiatives and most clients revealed hot spots or, at best, a yellow mid point on most questions.
One day, I had a meeting with the Head of Strategy of a large French group, Thales, and asked him my list of 12 questions. We had a great conversation about methods and design thinking and challenges. At the end I held up his innovation wheel based on his responses and asked him what he thought. He replied: “Quite the missed opportunity!” The model resonated!
I went on to create a digital version of The Innovation Wheel that has made it easier for teams to get an aggregated benchmark and an indication of where they need to focus their efforts. The goal, of course, was to get to a point where the mix was all greens and blues. The questions keep evolving — as do the ingredients.
So, what is the make up of this ‘Innovation Mix’ that I believe make or break innovation efforts in an organisation?
What do we need to have on the radar?
As I wrote, from my experience in Bayer — and this has been reinforced by my experience with a range of other businesses including Woodside, Elanco, Ford…the two most crucial are Method and Mindset (the former impacts the latter if you have the right approach). They are placed above the line as they need to be tended to as a priority. The other two are Mandate and Momentum. These 4 and their 3 respective facets are captured in ‘The Innovation Wheel’, below:
The five-point scale works in a heat map where the WARM colours are problematic and the COOLER colours suggest that things are looking good.
The scale starts with red where innovation is little more than corporate speak and ends with blue where things are ‘chilled’ and where innovation is integrated across the board. The Innovation Wheel illustrates the four areas of focus and three facets to watch in each of them to effectively drive innovation in your organisation. The cooler the colours, the better your organisation is in this area and the closer you are to integrating innovation.
Here is each quadrant in detail:
i) METHOD
The ability to generate and implement new, feasible and value-add ideas is not a talent; it’s a set of skills. It is not enough for an organisation to make innovation a ‘strategic pillar’ or ‘core value’, they need to train or bring in the tools and talent to manage every step of the innovation journey. I believe that innovation teams need to take care not to fall in love with a given approach used at the exclusion of others (Design thinking, Lean, Agile…). I encourage clients I work with to discover a range of tools and methods and to learn when they are ‘sharp’ and when they are ‘blunt ‘— and for what purpose. I think of this as creating an Innovation Shadow Board — like the board of silhouetted tools my father had n his garage when I was a kid. You wouldn’t reach for a spanner when you need a saw!
Method is required throughout the innovation process:
Firstly, the teams need robust methods for ideation to help them think differently and come up with sharp ideas that meet the specific criteria of the business. My take is that brainstorming is not optimal; rather, I advise clients to adopt more constraint-based, robust methods that generate more feasible ideas. Invest in training but don’t just tick the box; focus on applied training and reinforcing tools. Seek out train the trainer programs in toolsets you have found relevant for your organisation.
Secondly, it is vital to have the competencies and processes to incubate ideas and test hypotheses using low and high fidelity prototypes and learning from these experiments. This has been a huge focus in the Australian innovation ecosystem over the last few years.
Thirdly, the business needs to ability to implement ideas and manage a got to market strategy effectively; they need to know how to build. There is so much lip-service given to innovation that focusing on attaining tangible results is more important than ever. Teams should focus activities on result-targeted workshops where they address topics of concern with high buy-in from cross-functional teams. Attention needs to be paid to ownership, accountabilities, testing and implementation. Without this, any long-term aspirations to embed innovation may grind to a halt.
ii) MINDSET
Driving innovation requires us to shift mindsets to make way for change. You need to build a culture of innovation so that it permeates the business. We need people to be open to challenging what is and not being too attached to the status quo. They need more tolerance for ambiguity and for change. They need ways of challenging their biases and assumptions and managing resistance. Once this shift has occurred, the organisation is not only able to be more creative but it is more receptive to change and to disruption.
For me, mindset has three important facets:
The first is ensuring that people within the organisation are aware of barriers to innovation. The classic barriers cited are risk aversion, fear of mistakes, resourcing, time but what is often neglected is what is going on inside our minds: the biases and blinkers at play every time we think or try to think differently. I explore a small set of these in my book but one I encounter in all big organisations is cognitive fixedness. That is our tendency to get stuck; to lock things into structures, functions and relationships and not be able to imagine alternatives. My go-to method, Systematic Inventive thinking (AKA ‘SIT’) is very sharp at cutting through this. Keep in mind that the number one way to counter bias is to foster inclusion in diverse groups.
Keep in mind that the number one way to counter bias is to foster inclusion in diverse groups.
The second is a move from a very limited notion of innovation to one that allows more breadth. We still encounter corporates who have an ‘Innovation Guy’ or see the people doing R&D as the Innovators. This was the case in Bayer for many years. The innovation culture and mindset needs to permeate all areas of the business as well as all activities: processes, the way meetings are run, system design, experimentation with new technology, new product development, strategy and business models, go-to-market and so on. This notion of ‘breadth’ also means seeking partnerships, technology and know-how from the outside. Breadth also comes into play when you are looking at the impact of ideas. It is powerful to look at where any idea “throws junk” into a another department’s (or market’s) back yard.
The third aspect of mindset that I highlight is courage. Where there is a pervasive fear of making mistakes, employees will be reluctant to attempt new things or to share new ideas for fear of being ridiculed or judged — or worse, punished. Organisations that show innovation maturity tend to be congruent about the way they manage risk and mistakes. They give permission to take risks and even to fail. In some organisations this might mean rewarding risk — taking or, at the very least, encouraging senior managers to share mistakes they have made rather than only focusing on the wins.
iii) MANDATE
While I believe innovation initiatives should be bottom up, leadership really matters. Organisations can certainly falter in their innovation initiatives through a lack of support by the leadership. If the leaders are not taking innovation seriously, it will be hard for employees to do so.
Three key facets of what I am calling ‘mandate’ are focus, resourcing and structures. Just how strategic is innovation really?
Innovation cannot simply be a buzz word (as it so often is). It needs to be a long-term strategic focus. The senior leadership needs to set up organisational conditions that will encourage innovation and make it thrive. The senior leadership needs to set up organisational conditions that will encourage innovation and make it thrive.
If innovation is a focus, this needs to be resourced. It requires budgets, mental space and time, and physical spaces (inside or outside the building as well as one-off events — external hackathons and so on — and permanent areas). More important still, the ideas need to be adequately funded. Once you have determined that a process improvement, product, service or efficiency proposed by an employee is worth the risk, make the resources to implement it available. “One of the main advantages an established company has over a startup in launching a new idea is a deep resource base,” writes author and strategist Larry Myler.
If innovation is a focus and is being resourced adequately, it also requires the structures to be in place to scaffold it. This ranges guidance on where to focus efforts to a clear mandate to allow teams and individuals to spend time on innovative activities or inclusion of innovation efforts in the performance review process to creating the right structure for more breakthrough innovation or the appropriate partnerships inside or outside the organisation.This includes innovation leads, coaches, sponsors…Without clear roles, no one will take ownership of projects, drive implementation of ideas and sustain efforts.
iv) MOMENTUM
It is difficult to operate change in any organisation without a sense of momentum. People need to see progress. This starts with the right methodology and mindset, but the sense of momentum will only be credible and palpable if the efforts are recurring.
Three ingredients that support momentum are:
Ability to scale. Some ideas will be more impactful if they are scaled up across the business or into the market. This involves linking the new experience to operational processes, packaging opportunities and understanding the broader ecosystem… Scale is also about our ability to ramp up capability and build a committed innovation community. One of my clients has a dozen separate companies and a myriad of brands. For them, scaling effectively means optimising synergies and yet the innovation team struggles to commit to just 4 virtual meetings a year.
Communication plays an important part in building a culture and a sense of momentum. When the word ‘innovation’ is bandied around but nothing appears to have changed, it leads to cynicism not creativity. Internal communication should be motivating, consistent, engaging and fair—it cannot pick favourites. From an external standpoint, the organisation should profile itself as an innovator to build the brand and attract the right profiles. Where possible, getting involved in external innovation awards is helpful because it provides a benchmark.
Finally, too little focus is placed on measurement. What will you measure? The number of innovation boot camps? The number of ideas coming out of an idea generation session? The number of ideas implemented? The number of people involved in innovation efforts? The climate for change? Employee survey results? One measure I tracked when I was running the innovation community in Bayer were the implementation of ideas from ideation to go to market with clear stage gates and tracking of where things got stuck. That was helpful to take to the leadership. What I wish I’d done better was to ask: ‘What is the value to us of addressing this issue?’ or ‘What is the size of the prize?’ and ‘What is it costing us not to?’ This gives you a goal and a benchmark and will help tell the story of progress and learnings.
Companies need to bake innovation into their make-up at every level.
Companies need to bake innovation into their make-up at every level. When fostering a culture in a bigger organisation, innovation needs to be scaffolded throughout by a holistic innovation strategy, skills, processes, interfaces… There must be a commitment to create a company culture that encourages people to challenge the status quo; to think and act differently. But pay special attention to the ways you equip teams to actually think differently and invest in this. Do not assume that when you say: “Go innovate”, people will know how to do so!
