Do You Job Swap?

by Stefan Lindegaard

A while ago, I read an interesting article on how P&G and Google benefited by swapping employees for a couple of weeks.

This is a great way to learn new things and a good approach to establish long term partnerships.

Furthermore, it helps a company develop a more external-focused culture which is quite useful as we move towards open innovation.

I can’t get access to the original article but I found a copy here: A New Odd Couple: Google, P&G Swap Workers to Spur Innovation.

You should also check out the comments made by Innosight as they wondered how many other companies will team up to do this and if a more formal network and a business model will emerge to facilitate it.

It has been almost a year since these stories surfaced. The crisis most likely killed attempts by other companies, but perhaps we will see a comeback on this in the coming years. I definitely like the idea : -)

What is your mandate for (open) innovation?

by Stefan Lindegaard

When innovation leaders start on the path to create an innovation culture – or an open innovation program – it’s critical to understand that they will only get 1½ chances to do this thing right.

Why 1½? If they cannot build momentum on the first attempt, they may be given another shot at it. But this time they won’t be starting with a clean slate, so the odds of success will be less than the first time around. In other words, they will only be given half a chance because the disbelief created by failing at the first try will make any second attempt a serious uphill battle.

For innovation leaders to stand any chance of getting things right the first time, employees must believe that the executives are serious about the transformation the innovation leaders are seeking. The employees will ask questions such as: Is it just talk? Or have the innovation leaders been given a strong mandate to make real change happen? And are the innovation leaders up for the challenge? The answers to these key questions become apparent to employees very rapidly. Any dissonance between the innovation mandate and objective, and the reality of how things are actually being done, cannot be hidden.

I have previously argued that the innovation strategy of a company must be linked to the overall corporate strategy. This strategy must be devevloped by the innovation leaders and be approved by the executives. Once this is in place, a clearly given mandate can help work out the inevitable internal conflicts with regards to resources and authority given to innovation team.

The mandate should be easy to communicate to the stakeholders, who will be involved in making the strategy happen. The mandate should do two things:

• lay out the resources and authority given to the innovation leaders

• clarify how potential conflicts are to be handled

It is not complex. It is, however, important that the innovation leaders get full support from the executives. If middle managers across the company sense that innovation leaders do not have full executive support, they will challenge the innovation leaders when they ask for resources that “belong” to the middle managers. Middle managers have been given very clear assignements and this often leads them to focus on their own agendas rather than on what is best for the company. You cannot blame the middle managers because this is just how they are rewarded and promoted – do you assigned tasks well and you get your bonus and perhaps a promotion.

If an innovation leader gets caught in such a power struggle, the executives need to send strong signals that they are personally committed to the innovation initiative. Executives may even need to show their commitment in showdowns with individual middle managers or groups of them. Jørgen Mads Clausen, former CEO at Danfoss, was very good at taking managers aside and looking them straight in the eye while telling them that he really believed in this innovation initiative and that he hoped the manager shared this approach. This helped.

Innovation leaders must also educate executives on innovation and, more importantly, they must make the consequences of lack of support very clear for the executives. Innovation will not happen if the organization is not supportive and you cannot just assume that they are.

Innovation is not easy either for innovation leaders and executives.  A few years ago, I had an interesting talk with an innovation leader at an international producer of high-end goods. The company had relied on a stable product portfolio for many years, but - despite their success - knew they had to look beyond the kind of incremental innovation they were doing. In fact, this company needed to work on paradigm shifts that included a stronger focus on services and solutions rather than just products.

For this they brought in a great innovation leader who quickly built a team of people with varied backgrounds and competencies. The team created a good mix of incremental and radical innovation, but inevitably the different mindsets led to many clashes with managers throughout the company.

The innovation leader had to educate the CEO on his ideas and mindset. That process went well but the innovation leader and his team continued to clash with other parts of the organization. The innovation leader brought this up with the CEO and he was a bit surprised to receive this response: “I like what you are doing and I really want to support your work. You know that. However, if your initiatives cause too much trouble, I need to listen to our core people. They are the guys who bring in our revenues and profits, and we need this. Try to work this out in a subtle manner.”

The hidden message was that if there is too much trouble the CEO would have to kick out the innovation leader with short notice in order to satisfy the other guys. Unfortunately, as in this case, many innovation leaders do not have a clear mandate from their executives. This can cause bad situations, and it definitely makes the job of an innovation leader even harder.

Do the innovation leaders at your company have a clear mandate to make innovation happen? Or what about your new open innovation program? If not, what can you do get such a mandate established in your company?

Why you should commit to open innovation: Lessons from Rockwell Collins

by Stefan Lindegaard

Andrea Meyer of Working Knowledge pointed me to an interesting article on how Rockwell Collins, a 20,000 people company within communication and aviation electronic solutions works with open innovation.

I liked the article and in particular the below quotes that I want to share with you. They are strong and yet simple reasons why you should engage with open innovation initiatives.

Nan Mattai, senior vice president of Engineering & Technology at Rockwell Collins, encourages their employees to spend more time accelerating the use of technologies from external sources instead of reinventing wheels that others might have already developed.

“We have to be smart innovators,” said Mattai. “We have to be willing to collaborate inside and outside of our own four walls in order to bring the best solutions to our customers. That’s one of the ways in which we will continue to accelerate our growth and remain successful in this highly competitive marketplace.”

Raj Aggarwal, VP of Global Technology and Special Projects had this quote.

“Our mindset at Rockwell Collins simply needs to change,” admitted Aggarwal. “The idea of open innovation will eventually catch on because we have no other choice. No business is safe and, at the end of the day, it is our job to understand and anticipate what our customers’ true needs really are; we don’t have to be limited by our own brains.”

Why not take a look at the full article? Check this link: Open to innovative ideas

How to approach open innovation: With lessons from P&G

by Stefan Lindegaard

As you start the evolutionary process of adopting open innovation to your organization, always remember that open innovation is just a tool, not a goal. The goal is to grow your company and make a profit. Some companies might also have the goal of changing the world to a better place.

Understand that open innovation is only a piece of an overall innovation strategy. To begin, look for opportunities to develop overall open innovation capabilities out of the pockets of open innovation you may already have in your company in areas such as key partnerships, supply/value chain, and selected employees with the right mindset and toolbox. 

In my Leadership+Innovation community on LinkedIn, Chris Thoen, a R&D director at P&G, started a spirited discussion by asking which elements are needed to create an open innovation culture. The community suggested that open innovation requires these elements:

• People who can manage relationships with customers and partners. This requires agile and flexible people who have the “soft” skills of emotional intelligence—fundamental social skills such as self-awareness, self-fulfillment, and empathy—in addition to  traditional intelligence skills.

• Willingness to accept that not all the smart people work for your company or even in your department, and a corresponding willingness to find and work with smart people both inside and outside the company.

• Willingness to help employees build the knowledge and understanding of how an idea or technology becomes a profitable business, perhaps by developing a job rotation program that could even engage partners and customers.

• Understanding that failures represent opportunities to learn, and a willingness to reward those efforts and that way of learning. Failure is a fact of life for companies that pursue innovation seriously, and a leader’s response has a huge effect on company culture and therefore on future projects.

• Dismiss NIH (Not Invented Here). If we make the best use of internal and external ideas, we will win. We don’t need to own everything ourselves and keep it under tight wraps. We should profit from others’ use of our innovation process, and we should buy others’ intellectual property whenever it advances our own business model.

• Willingness to strive for balance between internal and external R&D. External R&D can create significant value; internal R&D is needed to claim some portion of that value.

• Willingness to be a risk taker rather than being risk averse, while using common sense to balance the risk level.

• Accept that open innovation does raise intellectual property issues. Your legal team can either choose to play offense or defense. Hopefully, they’ll adopt a constructive approach that supports progress toward the company’s business development goals.

• Understand that open innovation requires open communication. Work around the confidentiality and intellectual property rights issues to create an environment build on trust.

• No need to always be first. Building a better business model is better than getting to market first.

Finally, recognize that it is no longer enough to just be a good project manager, researcher or engineer—or leader. As you will learn in this book, open innovation not only requires a different mindset, but also requires new skills that include:

• Networking. Open innovation is all about networking, so the ability to build a networking culture is an essential role of an innovation leader as companies move more toward open innovation.

• X-vision. If you want to create significant innovation, you must be able to work across business functions and with many types of innovation to turn ideas into profitable products, services, or business methods. I call this X-vision. This is actually more of a mindset rather than a skill, but it’s extremely important to develop.

• Managing stakeholders. You do not need to have everyone on your side, but you need to generate adequate support to champion your ideas and enough leverage to overcome major hurdles.

• Making an effective elevator pitch. You need to be able to craft compelling messages to the stakeholders you want to influence.

It would be great to hear your comments on this.

Are there lessons we can learn from the people who innovated before us? – Podcast with Phil McKinney

by Stefan Lindegaard

I had the pleasure of meeting with Hewlett-Packard CTO, Phil McKinney a while ago. He is a great guy and very inspiring.

Phil is really into podcasts and he has just announced the first in a series of podcasts focusing on this interesting question: Are there lessons we can learn from the people who innovated before us? In the podcasts Phil conducts interviews with HP employees who were the minds behind some of the most important breakthroughs in HP’s history.

The first in the series is an interview with Dave Cochran, the product manager of the groundbreaking HP-35 calculator.  This was the first calculator that could perform all the functions of a slide rule, and it could fit in a pocket – an achievement that was incomprehensible at its time. Dave shares a lot of experiences and anecdotes about his work with Bill Hewlett and David Packard, along with stories about other team members including Steve Wozniak.

Check out this link: http://www.killerinnovations.com/blog/index.html

The full picture of innovation: Observations from Hewlett-Packard, Doblin and IDEO

by Stefan Lindegaard

Paul emphasized that successful intrapreneurship requires this level of innovation to differentiate it from standard business growth initiatives. This contrasts sharply with most people who are accustomed to innovate one thing at a time.  He explained that this is true, in part, because many leaders understand the need for a controlled plan or experiment — many are scientists and engineers who were taught the Scientific Method, or many have been fully trained in Quality Management, both employ the discipline of changing only one variable in an experiment at a time. But in order to be an intrapreneur, you need to think like a composer, not a musician, making changes to the entire orchestra simultaneously.

Paul’s emphasis on the number (three or more) and the approach (simultaneous, coordinated change) reveal some insights to intrapreneurial success for us all and why he is a highly-accomplished serial intrapreneur.  As a way to share his expertise to aspiring leaders, Paul teaches his methodology at the business schools of both Stanford and University of California-Berkeley.

Ten Types of Innovation

Not only do you have to think and work across business functions, you also have to innovate across the key areas of business when you move from ideas and research to revenue. Doblin has made some groundbreaking research showing that 96 percent of all innovations fail to meet their targets –  not necessarily because companies perform poorly at the core product or service innovation, but more often than not because companies fail to follow through with innovation in other key areas of their business. Businesses must be able to master all types of innovation – everything from business model innovation to innovation of products, processes, and services. This “whole picture” approach is important in delivering successful innovation, and is another key part of collaboration.

The T-shape from IDEO

On a more personal level, consider whether or not you are a “T-shape.” Innovation consultancy IDEO uses this term to describe people who are more likely to thrive with innovation. You should bring superior in-depth knowledge as an engineer, sales person or something else to the table. That is the vertical part of the T. But you should also have the breadth and empathy – the horizontal part of the T – to understand and appreciate the skills that other people bring to the table as you work as a team to become successful with your innovation projects.

As a T-shaped person, you accept that you don’t know everything and have the courage to seek help and advice from others. Gain a broader perspective by learning from those whose experience and views differ from yours.

Innovation leadership and culture: Observations from Johnson & Johnson

by Stefan Lindegaard

I have had the pleasure of getting to know Jeff Murphy over the last couple of months. Jeff is an executive director at Johnson & Johnson where he is working with improvement methodologies and business innovation.

At a meeting a couple of months ago, we got into a discussion on key leadership behaviors and decisions with regards to innovation leadership and culture. Jeff works with this at Johnson & Johnson and he has made the following observations on what business leaders who are seeking to improve their organization’s innovation capability and capacity should do.

They should:

• make innovation a TRUE business priority
• encourage cross-functional collaboration on innovation.
• make innovation part of everyone’s performance review. Recognize publically and  rewardappropriately.
• view failures as learning opportunities. Celebrate and recognize successes and failures from innovation. 
• put the emphasis on questioning, not telling. Your style and type of questions matter.
• allow flexibility to explore new possibilities. Collaborate inside and outside the organization.
• hire and value a diversity of thinking styles, experiences, perspectives and expertise.
• purchase or develop an idea management system that captures ideas and encourages people to build on and evaluate new possibilities.
• establish a seed fund for early innovation work.
• recognize and communicate that innovation is a long-term business process that needs to be cultivated, just like any other business process.

Besides these observations, Jeff also shared some of the questions he asks within Johnson & Johnson as they work to develop an even better innovation culture. Jeff has divided these questions into three categories: Culture, Capability and Cash.

Questions on Culture:

• What is your business case for improving at innovation?
• Who is/will be the senior management innovation champion?
• Who is/will be the deployment leader?
• How are key innovation management behaviors being demonstrated?  Communicated?
• What is your company’s innovation archetype or style?
• What communication vehicles are being used?  Who owns this?
• How is innovation ingrained in your rewards and recognition system?
• How is risk and failure handled?
• How do you measure and monitor your culture and engagement?
• What management and staff training has been conducted/planned?

Questions on Capability:

• What is your 3-year innovation deployment plan?  How is it aligned with your strategic plan?
• How do you plan to balance Big I vs. Little I?  What about internal vs. open innovation?
• What is your standard innovation framework or process?
• What training has been conducted for team leaders – and individuals?  What percentage has been trained?
• How do you get deep customer and market insights?
• How are ideas submitted?  Evaluated? Built upon? Tracked?  Killed?
• How do you hire for creativity and innovation?
• What do you measure regarding capability?

Questions on Cash:

• What innovation projects have been chartered and funded? In what areas?
• What do you measure regarding value realized?
• What is your track record (past 2-5 years)?
• What are your 1-3 year goals?
• What is your risk adjusted innovation pipeline value?
• What areas of your innovation process are working well?  Not working well?

Jeff and his team have developed an on-line Innovation Diagnostic Survey which quickly evaluates current conditions and performance around 75 key areas (including, Leadership, Strategy, Portfolio Management, Customer Focus, Culture, Innovation process, Training, and Metrics & Results) related to innovation.  This tool provides executives with a prioritized roadmap for innovation performance improvement.

I hope the sharing of these insights from Johnson & Johnson provides you with some inspiration on the development of innovation leadership and culture within your company. It would be great to hear your comments and other insights as well.

Should everyone work with innovation?

by Stefan Lindegaard

I have often made the argument that companies need two kinds of people to make innovation initiatives successful. They need innovation leaders who focus on building the internal platform required to develop organizational innovation capabilities. This is work on the strategic and tactical level.

Innovation leaders are often also involved as coaches and facilitators for the second group required for innovation; the intrapreneurs who turn ideas and research into new products and services. Intrapreneurs are much more operational minded, and they are rare within most companies.

A while ago, I had a conversation with Martin Smith, Director of Group Technology and Innovation at Manchester Airports Group. Martin believes there is a lot of truth to my ideas. However, he also made the observation that it implies that there are ‘Innovation Champions’, Operational Intrapreneurs’ …. and then the rest! Martin mentions that their focus, whilst recognising that there are always ‘best examples’, is to try and foster a culture where everyone is actively encouraged to innovate. That way the task of finding, coaching and encouraging the best should become easier.

It is a great observation by Martin and it prompted me to respond to him and clarify my thoughts as it also touches on one of the bigger questions within innovation. Should everyone in a company work with innovation?

First of all, I agree with Martin that we should avoid labelling some people as “innovation champions”. It makes other people think they do not have to be involved as the “champions” will just take care of it.

My next point often stirs some controversy, but I do not believe that you should let all employees work with innovation – at the same time. A large majority need to just focus on the core work including incremental innovation. This is where you make the money to bet on innovation and you need to focus on this.

On the other hand, every employee should be given the opportuntity to work with innovation even at a certain radical level through a variety of initiatives setup by your innovation leaders. This could be idea generating campaigns, internal business plan competitions and innovation camps.

Such initiatives help you find the people who have natural capabilities for making innovation happen. Some are just better than others and you need to identify and develop these people even further.

Doing all of this will help you build a strong innovation culture. It would be great to hear your comments on this.

What should managers do to get innovative employees?

by Stefan Lindegaard

Can you list five ideas on what managers should do to get innovative employees?

I was recently asked this question by a journalist and having pondered a bit on the e-mail, I decided to turn things a bit upside down and start out by challenging the managers first. This was my reply:

• Look into a mirror and ask yourself whether the person you see really understands innovation.

• Get external validation of your own self-assessment on your innovation capabilities – or lack thereof.

• Make the adjustments needed – if any – for you to manage innovative people.

• Focus on people before concepts, processes and ideas.

• Make a plan for how you will identify and develop the people you need to drive innovation within your department. Recruit accordingly inside and outside your organization.

• Understand your corporate innovation strategy and align your projects to this strategy. Hopefully, the innovation strategy has been aligned to the overall corporate strategy.

• Help your company create an innovation culture by giving your people the time and resources needed to develop a new mindset, skills and relationships.

• Give yourself and your employees time to reflect – our biggest challenge today is time.

What can you add to this list?

Innovation Upgrade: How Global Shifts Will Change Your View on Innovation

by Stefan Lindegaard

There is so much change in our innovation community right now. It is driven both by the economic crisis and the overall fast pace of change that we just need to get used to. I am convinced that once the crisis is over, things will not be as they used to be. We will get a new kind of normal, and I have been pondering what this will mean for our innovation community. These are just my early thoughts – your input is highly appreciated.

Shift 1: Information and knowledge are fast becoming more accessible and transparent. What happens when we can google all the information we need? How can we become better at extracting knowledge out of information? There is a lot of research going on in this field, and it will have a huge impact on innovation, a field in which we live by what we know and the ways we combine this knowledge.

Shift 2: Emerging countries. Every country in the world wants to become an innovation hotspot. The new thing is that the power is shifting from the western world companies to countries such as Brazil, Russia, China and India. We have been witnessing this within western corporations for years as the R&D and innovation now happen 24/7 with hubs not only in the western headquarters but also in the emerging markets. These emerging markets have three major benefits: hungry people who want to climb up on the value ladder, lower costs, and their location in high-growth markets making it easier for them to understand the needs of these customers.

Shift 3: Open Innovation. The first two shifts really make the case for open innovation, which is one of the key focus areas of my blog. We are beginning to see a large number of companies putting more focus on the external opportunities rather than just pursuing and optimizing the internal ones.

Shift 4: How people work. Did you read the book phenomenon The 4-Hour Work Week in which Timothy Ferris offers advice on how to escape 9-5, live anywhere and join the new rich? I found the book a tad superficial, but Ferris did hit on several important issues that propelled the book into a worldwide bestseller. People want to work differently and companies need to accommodate this desire to attract the best talent.

Shift 5: Innovation will focus more on people than concepts and processes. I believe we will see a growing number of companies that begin to understand that ideas, concepts and even processes are worthless unless you have the right people to turn ideas into revenues. Companies need to develop better organizational skills for identifying and developing the people who really drive innovation within their companies.

Shift 6: Virtual tools offer new ways to gain thought leadership positions. LinkedIn, Twitter and Google offer new ways to capture the minds of people. This goes not only for individuals who want to build a personal brand – or perhaps even a business – on thought leadership. It also goes for companies – and especially new ventures – that want to penetrate markets faster and better.

I think we need to look at these shifts from both a company and a personal perspective. You as an innovation leader must first decide how you can get the most out of your life – and not only in terms of money and status – and then work out the best way this can benefit the company – or companies – you choose to work for. I will dive deeper into these shifts in the near future. As mentioned, your input is highly appreciated.