How Innovation Is About People: Case From Statkraft

I had the pleasure of presenting my thoughts on innovation and intrapreneurship in a corporate session for managers from the Norwegian company Statkraft, which is Europe’s biggest producer of renewable energy. The reason for the session was that they have established a quite interesting program called The Innovation Agent. 

The program is an attempt to strengthen the culture of innovation and encourage innovation within the Statkraft group. In short, the agents work on specific innovation projects during a one-year period in which they can spend 20% of their work time on these projects. They also receive support from the innovation department and other people within the organization. This program is in its second year and it seems as if it has gotten good traction within Statkraft.

There are many such programs in the corporate world. So what makes this program worth writing about? Well, what I really like is how they work not only with the agents, but also with the managers of the agents. I should note that each agent has been appointed by a manager whose department has bought into the idea of the program. I have many times stated that the middle managers of an organization can make or break innovation initiatives. Check this blog post: TBX - An Approach To Developing The Innovation Culture
 
The innovation department at Statkraft understands they need the support of the middle managers to get current and future support for the program. So they gathered the managers of the agents to a 24 hour retreat. The purpose of the retreat was to help the managers better understand the Innovation Agent program, help the managers get a better understanding of innovation in general and help them make the innovation agents look great.

The retreat seemed to work very well. Several participants expressed an increased belief in the program. The retreat also provided the participants with a great opportunity to network across business functions and units and discuss how innovation should take place at Statkraft.

At the end of my session, I asked the question of how the managers could make the agents look great knowing this would also make them look great. I think the responses we got on this also work in other situations where people need to drive innovation. The feedback included:
 
• Show interest in the work of the innovation agents and provide the necessary support. The agents need tough and constructive feedback, but you should of course keep this on a positive and supportive level.
 
• Help them pick the fights they need to take. They will meet a lot of resistance but they should choose their fights wisely. The managers can help on this.
 
• Make sure the agents get proper recognition for their work. Remember that recognition is the most powerful incentive for innovation leaders and intrapreneurs. Well, perhaps except for Americans who seems to prefer financial incentives : – )
 
• Explain the program to other employees. Colleagues might not fully understand why these agents get to spend so much of their time on their projects leaving more work to them. The managers could explain the program to the colleagues and explain why they support this and why others should do the same.
 
I hope to stay in touch with Statkraft and hopefully this will give me the opportunity to give you an update on their activities in the near future.

A REQUEST: Do you know of other such programs that focus on developing the people who drive innovation? Let me know as I think it is worthwhile for the innovation community to it is relevant to share insights on such programs.

You can also get an idea of how business plan competitions have worked in companies such as Danfoss, Hewlett-Packard and Novozymes in this blog post: Corporate Business Plan Competitions