Jacob Dutton outlines a three-step process for setting innovation goals: define a SMART ambition with your CEO and team, identify which company assets you'll use, and map out market or technology areas to explore. These feed into a challenge statement that keeps innovation efforts aligned and prevents them from getting lost in politics.
Chapters
This is the reaction that I get when I speak to most C-suite executives and innovation leads when I ask them what their vision for innovation at company is. They know they should be doing something. This kind of feels like something, but they can't articulate, you know, why they're doing it or what they're doing, or moreover, what it is that they want to get out of their company's innovation efforts. Now, to set a North Star for innovation at your company, there are really 3 things that you need to do. The very first thing that you need to do is get into a room with your CEO, your sponsor, and your innovation team. Or, you know, if you don't have an innovation team, maybe you're starting out, then just you. I don't mean just you in the room, I mean you with your CEO and sponsor. And you've got to get together and articulate the ambition for what innovation is trying to achieve within that company, which is specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timeboxed. The second thing that you need to do is to identify which assets from the core business you'll need to leverage in order to reach this goal. So, you know, maybe you'll need to lean into the brand to leverage credibility for your new propositions. Maybe you'll need to borrow from R&D to commercialize some of their technology, or maybe you'll need access to capital. Whatever it is, spell it out. And the final thing that you want to do is develop some early-stage hypotheses around which territories you're going to focus on in order to reach that goal. You know, is it shifting consumer behavior? Is it an unfamiliar competitor set or some sort of emerging technology? You know, whatever those territories are, write them down. Then what you want to do is take the outcome of all 3 of these strands and turn them into what we call a challenge statement that frames everything that you and the company want from innovation. You know, when we're working with clients to build their capability, there are 10 key components that will make up their engine, and all 10 of these have to be in place before they can even think about, you know, running identification sprints, validation missions, or scale accelerators. And if they're not, you'll find yourself back in this stop-start world of resistance, internal politics, and stakeholder management. So What are those 10 key components? So, component 1, get that clear goal for what innovation is trying to achieve written down, properly communicated, and shared with everyone in the company. Sounds very obvious. Very few innovation teams have that north star, and without it, you'll become rudderless really, really quickly.
