What is Innovation?

by Stefan Lindegaard

Innovation. Just the word or term itself is enough to start heated discussions. I experienced this once more as I got some interesting comments from Scott Berkun and Ralph Kerle in response to my Why CEO’s Don’t Get Innovation post in BusinessWeek.

One of Scott Berkun’s comments went like this “If we dropped the i-word, or at least attempted to define it, I think we’d get to the core of all this much faster.” This comment builds further on an interesting article, Good Beats Innovative Nearly Every Time, in which Scott urges us to loose usage of the word innovation.

I appreciate Scott’s comments as well as I enjoyed reading his article. However, as I believe innovation will become even more important for companies, 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.

In another discussion related to my article, Ralph Kerle stated that innovation is an outcome. I have to disagree as I believe innovation is a process; not an outcome. The outcome is what you get out of an innovation process in which creativity plays a big role.

You can plan this process just as you can plan other management and business processes/disciplines such as sales, logistics and finance. You can also train people to become better innovators especially when you understand that innovation works best with a holistic approach. It needs to be about more than just products and technologies.

Innovation is beginning to look more like science than art, as we in many cases are now capable of taking previous patterns and experiences and use this to predict outcomes based on the input and processes we use. This maturity is one key reason why innovation is becoming even more important – and complex.

Both Scott Berkun and Ralph Kerle argue that we should forget about the term innovation. My response is that innovation is no longer a buzz word. It is here to stay and we can argue on definitions – which I always try to avoid, as I believe each company must find their own definition. But we can’t just pretend the term does not exist or should be replaced by another one. Those days are long gone.

Let me know what you think.

Upcoming talks and sessions with Stefan Lindegaard

by Stefan Lindegaard

This is an overview of my upcoming talks, sessions and Corporate Mind Exchange events. Let me know if you need a speaker or a session at your event or company – stefan@intrap.com

April 2, Corporate Mind Exchange, Beijing – I organize and facilitate a one-day session with open innovation leaders from General Mills, P&G, Shell, Qualcomm and other companies.

April 8, Open for Business, London – I participate in or moderate a panel on open innovation.

April 19, Corporate Mind Exchange, Las Vegas – I organize and facilitate a 24-hour session with open innovation leaders from General Mills, P&G, Shell, Qualcomm and other companies.

May 3, Front End of Innovation, Boston – I am moderating a panel with Jeff Bellairs, General Mills and Chris Thoen, P&G.

May 4, IBM Impact, Las Vegas – I will be giving two separate talks on the topics of open innovation and intrapreneurship.

August 11-13, Open Innovation Summit, Chicago – I will be giving a talk and/or hold a session on open innovation.

Copy Innovation – Is Copying Innovation?

by Stefan Lindegaard

How to Create a Networking Culture

by Stefan Lindegaard

In my previous post, Why a Networking Culture Is Important, I argued that a strong innovation culture requires a strong networking culture. But what does a good networking culture looks like?

It is such a new concept that there are not lot of examples available to illustrate it, but here are some key components of a good networking culture:

• Top executives and innovation leaders have outlined clear strategic reasons why employees need to develop and nurture internal and external relationships. This includes making clear how your company’s networking culture links with and supports your innovation strategy (which, of course, is an outgrowth of your overall corporate strategy.)
• Among the things to consider when developing your networking culture strategy is what types of networks you hope to build to support your innovation efforts. If your organization is moving toward open innovation, possibilities would include peer-to-peer networks for people working with open innovation in different companies, value – and supply – chain networks, feeder networks, and events and forums connecting problem solvers and innovators with your company.
• Leaders show a genuine and highly visible commitment to networking. Leaders must walk the walk, not just talk the talk. By making themselves available at networking events and by being visible users of virtual networking tools, they model the desired behavior and motivate others to participate. After all, who doesn’t want a chance to exchange ideas with the top brass?
• Leaders should also share examples of their networking experiences whenever possible. Spread the word about your own and others’ networking successes. Hearing leaders talk repeatedly about how networking is helping the organization in its innovation efforts will reinforce the message that this is important.
• Networking initiatives mesh closely with your corporate culture. This is not one-size-fits-all; each company’s networking efforts will differ. You can take bits and pieces, concepts and theories, knowledge and experience from others, but you still need to make it work for your own company.
• People are given time and means to network. Frequent opportunities are provided to help individuals polish their personal networking skills. Not everyone is a natural networker. But almost everyone can become good at it with proper training and encouragement.
• Both virtual and face-to-face networking are encouraged and supported. Web 2.0 tools and facilitated networking events maximize the opportunities people have to initiative and build strong relationships.

Let me know what you think and please feel free to add more components.

How to Advance Your Innovation Career

by Stefan Lindegaard

What can you do to advance your innovation career in times like this? Let me present some ideas and hopefully you can add more advice on this in the following discussion.

• Align With Executives. You need to have a better alignment between the innovation strategy and the overall corporate strategy. One way to do this is to make an extra effort of understanding what matters most for the executives right now and deliver on this.
• See What Comes Next. Once you deliver what the executives would like to see right now, you still have to be able to see what comes next and make sure that your company moves in that direction . The small wins gained by aligning with the executives hopefully make them more attentive to your suggestions on how to develop strategies on what comes next.
• Go External, Get Connected. As we move towards open innovation, you need to build better personal as well as corporate networks. Look at the external sources you need to connect with in order to develop the offerings of your company and expand your own career opportunities.
• Become A Digerati. As you work to develop more external ties, you need to gain a better understanding of social tools such as LinkedIn, Twitter and perhaps even Facebook. Facebook has a more private focus but there are industries where you need to understand how Facebook works in order to innovate better. Use these tools to gather and distribute information and knowledge and to build your personal brand if you have set a strategy for this.
• Build Your T-Shape. In short, the T-shape is about having depth as well as breadth. You need to understand how other business functions work and why they are important to the innovation process. One way to do this is to convince your executives that job rotation programs are great vehicles for building a better overall understanding of your company and its offerings.
• Get Noticed. In times like this, you need to make sure you get the proper credit for the work you do. I am not saying that you should just focus on your personal brand and disregard the work of colleagues. Find the right balance remembering that no one likes shameless self-promotion.
• Adjust Your Drive. Working with innovation you most likely have a faster drive and pace of change than that of your colleagues. You need to be careful about launching too many initiatives and pushing too hard as you need to get the support from others to get results. From time to time, you need to stop, look around and ask yourself if you have enough key stakeholders backing your projects.
• Are You A Future Executive? A majority of the innovation leaders I work with aspire to climb the corporate ladder and even become executives. In this case, you not only need to understand other business functions; you need to work in other functions such as sales in order to get the management experience needed to advance to higher positions. One reason is that innovation is carried out in smaller units not giving you the experience of working in – or leading – a larger department.
• I have only heard of a few cases in which innovation leaders advanced directly to executive positions; you need to build further on your resume and especially with sales responsibilities. Perhaps this is the time to develop new skills and competences by taking on new challenges?

Just some thoughts… I look forward to hearing your comments.

Why a Networking Culture Is Important

by Stefan Lindegaard

The reason for creating a networking culture is obvious once you look at the current and future direction of innovation. Let’s start by disposing of the myth of the lone genius — the Thomas Edisons and the Alexander Graham Bells of yesteryear — arriving at a breakthrough innovation on his/her own.

This model wasn’t true then, and even if it were, it simply does not hold true in today’s complex business organizations. Technology and the challenges that must be solved have become so complex that many — perhaps even most — companies can no longer rely solely on their own internal innovation geniuses, no matter how brilliant those people may be.

Innovation is increasingly about having groups of people come together to leverage their diverse talents and expertise to solve multi-faceted challenges that cross multiple disciplines. To make this happen within your organization — and beyond as you move toward open innovation — requires a networking culture that is designed, supported, and modeled by your company’s leaders.

Even organizations that are not ready to fully embrace open innovation are finding that employees ’ mindsets about networking must be stretched as more companies deploy internal R & D functions outside the corporate headquarters and around the world.

Employees start to wonder who should do innovation and where it should take place. Although this is positive, success in such situations depends heavily on the ability of the employees to initiate, solidify, and leverage external relationships.

Another key motivation for setting up networking initiatives is based on the simple fact that the knowledge of any company is inside the heads of the employees. Discovering and distributing this knowledge has always been a challenge, and now, more than ever, the ability to leverage a company’s collective knowledge and experience through virtual and face – to – face networks and communities is critical to innovation.

Furthermore, establishing the ability to bring knowledge and potential new innovation insights in from external sources demands a strong networking culture supported and modeled from the top.

In one of my next posts, I will give some advice on how to create a networking culture.

Customers and Innovation: Not Only Advantages

by Stefan Lindegaard

I recently did some research that once again led me to this great report by Vinova; Managing Open Innovation – Present Findings and Future Directions.

Here I found some interesting insights from Enkel, Kausch and Gassman who states that there are not only advantages, but also negative sides of integrating customers in the innovation process. This is the abstract from the Vinova report.

• Loss of know-how — Involve trustworthy customers, chose the moment and develop IP agreements.
• Dependence on customers’ views — Chose the ‘right’ customers and work with a mix of customers.
• Dependence on customers’ demands or personality — Avoid exclusivity agreements, work with HR to understand customers and their culture and apply open communication.
• Limitations to mere incremental innovation — Work with lead users and indirect users, use the right method to include customers and chose an intelligent timing.
• Serving a niche market only — Use different customers in different stages of the innovation process and pay attention to the search field process.
• Misunderstandings between customers and employers — Develop solid relationships with customers, use the right tools and develop suitable incentive systems.

I found this to be good insights worth sharing with you.

P.S. – Thanks to Ralph Ohr you can find the full report by Enkel, Kausch and Gassman here: Managing the Risk of Customer Integration

Good Reads, Videos and Discussions on Innovation #11

by Stefan Lindegaard

Here comes a list of reads, videos and discussions on LinkedIn that I have enjoyed in the last couple of weeks. I hope you will enjoy this as well.

You can follow me on Twitter

READS AND VIDEO

GOOD READ Viral growth trumps lots of faux followers by Seth Godin
http://bit.ly/doFe2O

Maximizing the marketplace with open innovation – interview with Steve Shapiro
http://bit.ly/9onWPw

Failure – The Mother of Innovation by Paul Sloane
http://ow.ly/1oFO1r

Overcoming One of the Biggest Barriers to Open Innovation by Nanette Stangle-Castor
http://bit.ly/brmqZv

Using Knowledge Brokering to Improve Business Processes by Billington and Davidson
http://bit.ly/c8fNU4

Five for Friday: Best Open Innovation Experiments by Hypios
http://bit.ly/dc88Ze

Do Startups Fare Better in Silicon Valley Than ElseWhere? by Business Insider
http://bit.ly/aQqx6D

GOOD READ Should Companies restrict Employees’ Social Media use? by Harish Kotadia
http://bit.ly/b0xM9R

Open Innovation Made By Lego and What Others Can Learn from It by Klaus-Peter Speidel
http://bit.ly/8X7QZh

Part 3 – Three Innovation Distinctions by Steve Shapiro
http://bit.ly/depX8v

GREAT READ – How to Hire the Best People You’ve Ever Worked With by Marc Andreessen
http://bit.ly/5YzWlU

Innovation That is Measured is Treasured by Robert Brands
http://is.gd/7ZIde

Technology Does Not Equal Innovation by Jeffrey Phillips
http://is.gd/88L7p

GOOD READ Is Open Innovation the Way Forward for Big Pharma?
http://bit.ly/ccxHAr

Open Innovation Possibilities by Organizing Customer Data by Maddock Douglas
http://cot.ag/dCj1In

Is open innovation over-hyped? by Roy Luebke
http://bit.ly/deveDq

Consider partners to help your business innovate by Cheryl Perkins
http://bit.ly/dxm8Ug

How to find potential open innovation partners by Chuck Frey
http://bit.ly/9sv0bq

Why open innovation alliances fail by Chuck Frey
http://bit.ly/czbPJR

GOOD READ Reverse Innovation a Popular Trend by Yann Cramer
http://is.gd/7ODLQ

Smashing Silos by Evan Rosen
http://bit.ly/9LnbSd

The Overlap of Open Innovation and Experience Co-Creation by Volker Bilgram
http://ow.ly/1ohrNo

The Top Consumer Trends of 2010 by N. Kumar
http://bit.ly/aPnzWi

Pepsi Skips Superbowl in Favor of Crowdsourcing Initiative by Time
http://bit.ly/ckik4T

GOOD READ: Four Models for Competitive Crowdsourcing by Hutch Carpenter
http://bit.ly/d2XNAh

Open Innovation’s Next Challenge: Itself by Hagel and Seely Brown
http://bit.ly/bKR9dX

LINKEDIN DISCUSSIONS

How do you know that an idea is of high quality? by Doug Della Pietra

Does any have direct experience with reversed innovation? by Glenn Tracey

Can a company make profits in an “open standards” environment proprietary position? by Mark Karasek

Creating Organisational Fluidity in R&D Units

by Stefan Lindegaard

At a recent meeting in one of my network groups for innovation leaders, Steen Lindby, VP Group R&D at Rockwool presented his organizational re-design of a 60-people R&D group.

Some of the key objectives were to get more flexibility between resources and activities and to increase the delegation of responsibility in order to get better outcomes.

It was a great presentation and I – as well as the other participants – especially liked the below “ideas” that Steen used to develop the re-design. The work of Gary Hamel was an inspiration for this.

• Empowerment by less management, but keeping discipline and focus
• The spirit of community binds us together rather than an organisational hierarchy 
• Enlarging sense of purpose, that merits extra ordinary contributions
• Enrolled every one as an innovator
• Making time and space for innovation, even though everyone is working flat out
• Creation of a steady flow of strategic options within next generation technology
• Acceleration of reallocation of resources between ongoing projects and new ideas

This sounds like an environment we all would like to create and work in. Nice wording, Steen!

Making Radical Innovation Happen

by Stefan Lindegaard

I have had the pleasure of working with Novozymes which is a world leader within bioinnovations on several projects. I really like their mix of high ambitions, great people and top management support in order to make innovation happen. 

A few years back, they captured the below feedback as they asked the organization how to deal with innovation. 
 
• Give time and room for skunk work
• Set up place to evaluate and incubate new ideas
• Make it easier to get seed funding
• Initiate more risky and experimental projects
• Set up support group for innovators
• Ideas and project need a team to go to for evaluation
• Get idea management in shape

This kind of feedback is fairly normal in most organizations being serious about innovation. As one of many responses, Novozymes developed the Radical Innovation Catalyst (RIC) program.

RIC is a vehicle to evaluate and mature new radical ideas and transition them into projects. This can be new ideas in completely new businesses, new ideas adjacent to established businesses or new technology ideas. One of the main purpose with RIC is to accelerate the decision process on whether to invest further in these projects.

The core team consists of people working full-time with innovation and they can draw upon resources from different functions within Novozymes. As I write this, the core team has interviewed and selected 46 people all eager about getting a chance to work with such early stage projects.

Now imagine that these 46 people all have full-time jobs, but that the RIC unit has been given the mandate to pull these people out of their day jobs and have them work on RIC projects – if deemed necessary. This is a very strong signal that innovation is just as important as the daily operations.

Marianne Thellersen, the head of the program, explains that they usually have 4 on-going projects and that a project normally involves 3-5 people spending 25-100% of their time on the project. A project usually runs for 3-4 months.

I asked Marianne Thellersen a couple of questions:

How do managers of the daily operations react when you pull out their people for your projects?

“Most line managers are very supportive towards RIC and the involvement of their people. Of course we sometimes compete with existing business projects, and in such cases RIC will often have to find another person for the project. It should however be added, that not only official RIC members take part in the projects, often there are 2-3 Novozymes experts loosely connected to the projects thereby ensuring the necessary expert input and experimental work required.”

How effective is the RIC program at turning ideas into real projects that get further attention and funding?

“Until now the focus of the RIC program has been Radical Innovation ideas, and as expected not very many of these have turned into real projects. On the other hand, we now know when to enter the areas of interest, since the RIC projects have mapped the requirements within market, technology, organization and resources, which have to be fulfilled for Novozymes to initiate a project.”

Can you share any key learnings on the program?

“In an entrepreneurial company culture like Novozymes’ it has been relatively easy to recruit members for the RIC society, and it has been a great way to engage the whole global organization in working with new ideas. We have however also learned that it may be necessary to get truly allocated resources in order to get things more efficiently through. And in addition we may have to focus more on Adjacent Innovation instead of Radical Innovation in the coming years in order to get more ideas turned into pipeline projects.”
 
Radical innovation is hard work. This is just one approach. It would be great to hear about other approaches….