Why Titles of Innovation Programs Matter: C+D, Connected, Collaboratory

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The reason for this topic is that the ability to communicate well on innovation efforts is becoming even more important as innovation turns open and global.

Innovation leaders and their executives need to convince employees as well as external stakeholders that they understand innovation and that their efforts are relevant and rewarding.

The name of an innovation programs reveals a lot. P&G calls one of the their key programs Connect+Develop, General Mills labels their efforts as Connected Innovation and Intuit runs a program called Intuit Collaboratory.

This states that they believe the future of innovation is about openness, external relationships and collaboration.

Open innovation is about finding other partners. However, it is just as much about letting potential partners find you and the title of your programs can help guide companies into your direction.

How should companies approach the naming of their programs? Actually, this starts by how they define the term innovation.

I have just had some interesting discussions on the term, innovation. Some people believe we should simply drop the term as it means so many different things to different people.

I think we are stuck with the word and we can just as well get used to it. It will not go away.

The big question is how companies will define innovation to their situation. It does not really matter how academics, consultants or others define it; each company need to define this in a way that makes sense for their company, their employees and their partners.

Then, they can start developing a common language on innovation that can help them build a strong innovation culture. When companies do this, I urge them to do it in a way that includes the open and external elements.

Why? I believe that in about 5 years of time, we will no longer talk about open or external innovation. It will just be innovation. P&G has already reached this level of innovation maturity and many others are about to follow.

I recall a recent session where the company I worked with had no definition of innovation. We looked into this and they first started to define innovation and then looked at open innovation. We quickly reached the conclusion that there is no need for two definitions. They can do just fine with one definition. The same goes for other companies, yours included.