A company’s big challenge with innovation is seldom the volume of ideas. Indeed, in a survey conducted this year by my company, only 6% of corporate innovators said that their biggest problem was having too few ideas. But not all ideas are equal, and poor or highly derivative ideas might consume far too much attention. Frequently those ideas are related to emerging trends, involve more than the company can do on its own, require nurturing, and are cross-functional in nature. The real need is to ensure that the right ideas get ahead and get considered.
So what do you do?
Trend Sensing
Companies frequently hop on trends, but many do so only once the trends are well into their lifecycle. That can be costly and risky — market values may already reflect discovery of the trend, and the trend may have peaked. Nestle, for instance, bought the lean diet company Jenny Craig in 2006 for approximately $600 million, after weight loss trends were already starting to move away from Jenny Craig’s focus on fat content due to new discoveries in nutrition science. Nestle then sold the business cheaply seven years later as it divested several underperforming brands.
Strategic Partnerships
You don’t have to contain yourself to your team or the organization when it comes to innovation. Great innovations can come from collaborations with suppliers, customers, universities, startups, or companies using relevant technology in a totally different way.
Intrapreneur Programs
Where do employees with big ideas go? Often, they make their big ideas small to get approved easily, or they simply leave. History is witness to how Steve Wozniak left HP because it wouldn’t do anything with his design for an early personal computer — the Apple I. In fact, they rejected it five times! Organizations serving the core business day-to-day may hesitate to take the ideas on board because they don’t fit their operating model and may drain resources and take too long to pay off. To fight these challenges, companies need to provide a structured way for idea champions to build out their concepts without over-committing to them before they’re ready.
Innovation Communities
Innovations often happen at intersections, yet many companies lack ways for innovators to connect informally and see where conversations go. This can also make innovation a lonely endeavor. It doesn’t cost much or take a lot of time to provide people with common innovation interests a means to connect and exchange ideas. At the very least, it’ll help keep them motivated. At best, it may trigger new kinds of cross-disciplinary collaborations that open up previously unseen vectors for change. Don’t be Atari, which was abandoned in frustration by another future Apple co-founder: Steve Jobs.
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By Stephen Wunker / Harvard Business Review
