Future Foundry LIVE: How to Build a Corporate Innovation Engine - Office Hours

It is our Office Hours segment, which is the bit that you're already here for. That's why we leave it to the end. So we're really excited to have Nicola, who is Innovation Program Director at London Stock Exchange Group, here with us today. I'm mega excited that Nicola's here because it's an opportunity for you guys to hear from someone who's been there and done that on everything that we've just discussed. Nicola, first of all, before we get into the questions, can you give us a little bit of background on you and what it is that you do at London Stock Exchange Group?

Sure, sure. Thanks for having me. So, I have been in and around the financial services and technology industries for about 30 years now, primarily in project program management, business operations, and product management. I've been specifically focused on innovation in a couple of different organizations for about 4 of those years. And at Elseg, I had previously had a very dedicated innovation role in business management. And now I have moved into a specific area or territory, I think using your phrasing from earlier, into sustainable finance and investing where there is still a heavy amount of innovation happening and I'm still very heavily involved in that. But I'm in one of the, what I think you'd call the fixed roles, actually helping out with things like operations rhythm and cadence, finance, planning, projects, et cetera, et cetera.

Awesome. There were, well, there were tons of different themes I think we could have picked from in terms of questions off the back of the last episode of Future Foundry Live. But yeah, we've distilled them down into kind of 3 key questions that people were really keen to understand more about as part of this episode. I think first question, by far the most common, is what's the approach, Mikaela, for taking leadership on a journey from this world of ad hoc start-stop corporate innovation initiatives into a world of having like an always-on engine? What does that journey look like for you?

There's several aspects to that. I think one is, you talked a little bit about inspiration and stories, right? So, first of all, I think making sure people understand the art of the possible. So, showing how innovation can bring strategy to life, and that's important, right? Because then it's strategically relevant. And the potential power then of scaling and industrializing that innovation. I think that's a great place to start. And then I think very close second to that is the cultural shift, right? So, what values, what beliefs, what behaviors are important to make that cultural shift towards what I'd call industrialized innovation? So, for example, if we're talking about values, we agree that we're customer-led in all we do. That might be one of them. Right, in terms of beliefs, having the belief and the alignment around that belief that speed of execution is a strategic differentiator, right? Or in terms of behaviors, that we will create that safe space for experimentation and learning. So I think those are the first 2 things I'd probably call out. I think also the other thing to think about is how are you actually going to measure success around innovation? And it can't be in the form of traditional measures, right? Because We don't always have a nice convenient ROI to play back, right, to people. So thinking more along the lines of speed of option creation, cost avoidance, decision velocity of having an innovative agile approach, I think all of those things are important to highlight as you're bringing folks along on that journey.

And then thinking about, so, So shifting that culture and that mindset, I really love the term around like industrialized innovation. Feels fantastic. And that's exactly what we're trying to describe here with Corporate Innovation Engine. Aside from that sort of culture shift within leadership, what have you found? We talk about 10 precursors here. What have you found to be the most important precursors for success, foundations that you've built this industrialized So, that's a tough question to answer because there isn't one silver bullet, right, in all honesty.

But I think if I was to pick a broad theme, I would say there's a natural profile misalignment between innovating teams and run-the-business teams, right? They're 2 very different value creation streams. So, I think the more you can close that gap, which you've talked a lot about today, the more you can close that gap, the better off you'll be. So in terms of going back to those shared belief systems and cultural shifts, but also making sure that you do have that interlock with your innovation process with the rest of the core team, right? So whether that's around funding, whether that's around governance, other key processes, but it's really critical to try to meet those 2 value streams and join them up. That's probably the one thing I'd call out.

And in terms of, I mean, a lot of the foundational elements really, I guess, Nicola, are really all around governance, aren't they? Right? Like there's, you know, 9 of the 10 components that we just brought up, nothing to do with identifying ideas or validating initiatives, taking them to market. It's all really about governance. How does governance around You know, which new opportunities you're going to explore, what ideas you're going to validate, what initiatives you're going to scale. How does governance work for you, and how do you decide which territories to innovate within, you know, which ideas to back, which initiatives to invest in scaling?

I think I'd pick up on your territories point, right? So I think that innovating teams absolutely have to be aligned to strategic ambitions, right? Especially when you think about the funding of that innovation as well. It's great if you've got seed funding, But if you're not developing things that are in agreed territories or strategically aligned to ambition, then you're never going to get that next level funding to scale that and to actually really make that a reality. So I think definitely the strategic alignment and those territories, in my experience, that's always worked better. In fact, several years ago, I asked a very naive question of somebody in innovation, I remember, and I actually said, it must be great to just like have a really blank sheet to just innovate. And he said, actually, no, that's not helpful. It's actually much more helpful to have a few constraints or to have a territory or to have something that actually focuses the mind and actually is about solving a particular opportunity, problem, or challenge. And it's the same but on steroids when you're thinking about a corporate innovation engine, right? But you really do need to have that strategic alignment. I think you mentioned the desirability, feasibility, and viability test. That's also absolutely critical in terms of deciding what to go after. You know, you're gonna do that early experimentation and assessment and you're gonna determine that customer voice and that customer validation. You know, can you really demonstrate that there's a need? From a feasibility standpoint, is it possible? Can it be done? And from a viability standpoint, are you really, you know, are you really set up to be commercially successful in this, right? Is it really something your company wants to get into? So looking at the, you know, commercial feasibility, the customer validation around that distribution channels and things like that. So I think all of the time thinking about those things and actually having the governance process around that to be able to take decisions at various different points, right? So you're not just taking one decision, you're taking several at several different points, and you have a decision to make at each of those points. Do you continue? Do you reshape it? Do you kill it? And any of those are okay. So that's what I would offer in terms of governance.

That's such an interesting point because, yeah, we talk about Placing a large number of small bets, but what you say is absolutely right. You know, we're also thinking about making a large number of smaller decisions, right, than betting the house on one opportunity or opportunities.

Indeed.

Amazing. Nicola, thanks so much. If you'd like some professional help as it pertains to corporate innovation, then please do book a demo. We can walk you through how Future Foundry can help you 10x your innovation impact. If you're quick enough, you can use that QR code to, um, to book a demo, uh, or drop me a follow on LinkedIn, and you'll get some daily snippets of corporate innovation goodness in your eyeballs. Um, that is all for now. Keep an eye on your inbox for the next Future Foundry Live, which is coming up in April. Thanks so much for joining us. If you'd like us to run this episode of Future Foundry Live inside your company, We did that a few times after the last one. We're happy to help out and do that. Also, if you've enjoyed this episode, head to LinkedIn, share your feedback, tag us in that. We'd love to hear it. But for now, that's it, and we'll see you next time. Bye.