By Scott Kirsner
When a CEO announces a major initiative to foster innovation, mark your calendar. Three years later, many of these ambitious ventures will have quietly expired without an obituary.
Large companies don’t lack for good ideas. And early data often shows that customers are willing to pay for them. The problems arise when projects need to be transferred to the business units for a large-scale launch. Is there enough communication? Does the business unit feel like the project is something it had a hand in shaping—or is it more like a perishable package left on a doorstep? Are people moving from the innovation lab or pilot-test team to help with the rollout? Is anyone responsible for ensuring that these projects don’t fall through the cracks or drop to the bottom of the sales force’s priority list?
Having the freedom to explore long-term ideas and emerging technologies is important. But most of the teams formed to bring these new ideas to life require help from the organization’s business units. One way to create an alliance is to invite the business units to lay out targets or problem areas for the innovation or research and development group to explore, or to supply funding so that the business units share some of the risk.
To make these intertwined innovation models work, some companies also rotate business-side people through the innovation groups—often to provide commercial expertise, or to help make introductions to customers who might be willing to test new products and provide feedback. Or companies are exporting innovation team members to the business unit that will be responsible for launching their project, so someone knowledgeable and passionate is involved.
But as this transition plays out, few companies are paying enough attention to creating accountability and incentives for success. This area is the black hole of innovation—no matter how much you’re spending on staff, training, software or nifty new innovation centers, value can vaporize at this stage.
Innovators thrive on discovery and the nurturing of new ideas. Business unit operators love hitting goals and finding new efficiencies. While their motivations are very different, these two groups need one another to succeed in the market. And CEOs must foster constructive connectivity between them if they want innovation to deliver real impact after the initial news release.
Scott Kirsner is the editor of Innovation Leader and a business columnist for The Boston Globe.