Innovation Strategy: How to build an office of innovation
Creating an office of innovation, one that strikes with disruptive new ideas and insights on a regular basis, is a task rapidly rising on CEOs’ lists for 2013. According to latest research from the Conference Board, CEO Challenges 2013, innovation is among the top three challenges faced by CEOs in 2013. The report goes on to identify top five strategies to address innovation, one of which entails the creation of culture of innovation by promoting and rewarding entrepreneurship and risk-taking.
As CEOs embark or continue on their innovation journey, they are dedicating teams and whole departments to lead their organizations toward change, improvement and growth. The Chief Innovation Officer may be a new addition to corporate staff but the role has a familiar charge: To guide the organization toward new ways of thinking, working and acting that produce a palpable and profitable shift in the way everyone works.
For the past three years the Innovation Leaders Forum (ILF) has connected the innovators charged with bringing about this organizational change and the resources and peers who can help them. On April 23 the ILF returns to Boston for a day of workshops and discussion to help create an enterprise innovation function.
Moises Norena will share his experiences building a global innovation function at Whirlpool, while Lorna Ross from Mayo Clinic will speak about transformative innovation. Phil Swisher from Brown Brothers Harriman will show you how to make the case for the right Chief Innovation Officer and Jim Euchner, VP of innovation at Goodyear, will explore enterprise innovation best practice. Innovation columnist Scott Kirsner of the Boston Globe will then join the speakers for a panel discussion.
This daylong conference and networking event brings together the best minds in collaborative innovation, and this year’s presentations will spark new thinking in how enterprise innovation is built and systematized in your organization. We hope you can join us for the day.
image credit: extralast.com
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Bryan Mahoney is the business writer and content editor at Imaginatik, an innovation management consultancy and software company based in Boston.
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For an understanding of innovation to be communicated and applied effectively in any organisation, its consideration at a strategic level is clearly important.
However the discussion of “innovation strategy”, as if separate from other “strategies”, makes little sense. This is expressed well, for example, by Roger Martin in Don’t Let Strategy Become Planning:
“That strategy is a singular thing; there is one strategy for a given business — not a set of strategies.”
Although the distinction might seem subtle, in my view, it makes more sense to refer to the importance of having an Innovative strategy, which addresses innovation together with all other strategic issues.
It is good to see that the role of the innovation function is to be addressed at the ILF day on April 23.
It is interesting that companies start do dedicate too positions to foster innovation. At the same way to develop some sort of Innovation Strategy. Simply said top managers believe that Innovation is important enough to receive that kind of attention, and a strong message for shareholders.
But I agree there are some risks as well. First is how “the rest” of teh company will receive that news. Years ago a top bank in Brazil did the same and others employees felt different reactions from jealousy to accomodation by understanding that “they are the innovation guys”, “I will not participate anymore ?”, “I don´t need to woory now on being innovative they will get it done”.
The second risk is what John just said, to come up with a Innovation Strategy detached from corporate strategy.
It would be beautifull to see a company with a Innovation Strategy that is in fact a useful translation of corporate strategy. And a company to have a CInnoOfficer fostering the Nine Roles of Innovation (By Braden Kelly) all around the whole company, and give the opportunity to every single employee to find his/her place in innovation challenge.
If I find such a company for sure I will share it in this blog. I wish you do the same.
I agree. in mu opinion, “culture shaping” must follow the execution of innovation strategy. Designing the future must have a “construction team”. Design without positioning the human operators for change is futile.