Only 3% of Companies That Rank Innovation as a Priority Feel Ready to Deliver Results
Feeling like Ethan Hunt on a mission impossible when it comes to delivering tangible results from your innovation efforts? You are not alone. Despite 83% of companies identifying innovation as one of their top three priorities, only 3% believe the right systems are in place to achieve tangible results, according to BCG's 18th Annual Innovation Study.
Innovation is a complex process, and most companies do not have the necessary procedures in place to support their managers and employees in implementing new ideas.
To help organisations navigate this challenge and close the ambition-capability gap, the business consulting firm Strategyzer hosted a webinar titled 'How to Deliver Innovation Results: Expectation vs. Reality.' In this article, I will summarise the webinar's key takeaways and offer further insights on how companies can deliver tangible results on their innovation projects.
Eight steps to translate innovative ideas into tangible results
1. Establish an Innovation Strategy
Without a clear innovation strategy, different parts of an organisation can easily pursue conflicting priorities—even if there is a cohesive business strategy in place. As noted by Gary P. Pisano, Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, an organisation’s capacity for innovation stems from an innovation system: ´a coherent set of interdependent processes and structures that dictates how the company searches for novel problems and solutions, synthesises ideas into business concepts and product designs, and selects which projects receive funding." In an article on Harvard Business Review, Professor Gary P.Pisano, insists on the fact that ´individual best practices come with trade-offs, requiring complementary changes across the organisation’s innovation ecosystem. A company without a well-defined innovation strategy lacks the ability to make informed trade-off decisions and to shape its innovation framework effectively´.
If your organisation already has an innovation strategy, you can assess its robustness by applying Roger L. Martin’s "smell test." This involves examining core strategic choices to see if you could convincingly make the opposite choice without appearing foolish. For example, if the mantra is "we want the best quality," you should consider the opposite stance—"we want the worst quality"—to challenge your current perspective.
What if your company doesn´t have an innovation strategy yet? According to the Strategyzer team, companies can get started by organising a one or two-day workshop. This exercise can contribute to clarifying the company’s innovation direction and priorities.
To build a robust innovation strategy, Professor Gary P. Pisano recommends ensuring that the strategy answers the following questions:
How will innovation create value for potential customers?
How will the company capture a share of the value its innovations generate?
What types of innovations will enable the company to create and capture value, and what resources should each type receive?
2. Align Your Strategies
It's crucial to ensure that your innovation strategy aligns seamlessly with your overall business strategy to achieve meaningful outcomes. Alarmingly, the BCG report reveals that only 12% of executives believe their company’s innovation strategy is strongly linked to its overall business strategy.
3. Create a Simple Process
Your innovation strategy should outline a straightforward process that empowers team members to take action when they have ideas for improving existing products or processes, or for developing new ones. As emphasised in the webinar, it’s crucial to clearly define where and how employees can submit their ideas and proposals.
4. Implement a Transparent Decision-Making Process
Transparency is essential. Everyone in the organisation should know who is responsible for making decisions, how those decisions are reached—grounded in evidence rather than personal opinions—and how to access funding for testing and validating ideas. This openness not only fosters trust but also cultivates a vibrant culture of innovation within the organisation.
5. Make Innovation a Priority
Innovation requires increasing amounts of time as it evolves—from exploration and testing to execution and scaling. It's essential to allocate dedicated time for innovation. Are your teams given specific time to brainstorm and generate innovative ideas? Is innovation genuinely prioritised? Evaluating the monthly time spent on enhancing existing products, refining processes, or developing completely new solutions can be a transformative strategy for fostering a culture of innovation
6. Invest for the Long Term
Convincing leadership to allocate resources for innovation can be challenging, especially when immediate results are not apparent. It’s crucial to articulate the long-term benefits of investing in innovation to establish a sustainable competitive advantage. During the webinar, the Strategyzer team shared examples of how companies have successfully navigated these challenges, such as by allocating additional human resources to support innovation initiatives.
7. Integrate Core Business and Innovation Projects
Striking the right balance between ongoing business projects and innovation initiatives is crucial for sustained growth.
8. Handovers don´t work when innovating
One key point to remember is that handovers don’t work when it comes to innovation. The same team that generates an idea should also be responsible for its development and execution. They know the core business and what needs to be improved. This continuity fosters ownership, commitment, and a deeper understanding of the ideas being pursued.
In conclusion, bridging the gap between innovation ambitions and outcomes requires a thoughtful approach. By establishing a solid innovation strategy, aligning priorities, simplifying processes, ensuring transparency, and committing to long-term investment, organisations can unlock their full innovation potential.
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You can find more information in the following links:
´How to deliver innovation results: expectation vs reality´ webinar by Strategyzer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF2E7RucYDo
BCG's 18th Annual Innovation Study: https://www.bcg.com/publications/2024/innovation-systems-need-a-reboot
Professor Gary P. Pisano article on Harvard Business Review: https://hbr.org/2015/06/you-need-an-innovation-strategy
