Innovation culture and process

A few years ago, I was sat in a room with around 200 managers, leaders and consultants. When the question was asked, who has an innovation process? Only about five people put their hands up. Having an innovation process need not be a complicated undertaking. But when innovation now needs to be treated as importantly as hr, finance and other traditional functions, every company should now have a clearly defined innovation process. If they don't, it means the senior leadership team has dropped the ball and someone needs the courage to point it out and propose a solution.

My name is Rob Lewelling and as you know, companies need people with the right capabilities to manage and lead transformation. As you know, orchestrating successful transformation isn't that easy. And I mean innovative transformation which creates a new future without the constraints of the past. Which is why I hope that what I share in this episode will help you get better equipped to perform at your best as a manager, leader or consultant. If you want to learn more, go.

To studythrive.com Innovation is the process of turning ideas into value. So the question all companies need to be able to answer is what is our innovation process? After all, innovation is a function within a company and as with all functions, it requires structure and a process. In 2016 I was sat in a room full of around 200 digital business transformation managers and leaders when the question was asked, who has an innovation process? And to my surprise, about five people put their hands up. Having an innovation process need not be complicated. Ideally, an innovation lead will be appointed and they should chart an innovation maturity roadmap for the company. A simple process is at least something to get started with in the knowledge that this will mature over time. Innovation needs to become part of the organization's culture and encouraged to flourish within it. That way the company can tap into the hidden treasure chests of ideas that otherwise lay dormant and hidden away. To do that, you create an innovation culture which is supported by an innovation process. From a cultural perspective. As part of the digital business transformation undertaking, it needs to be clearly communicated what the of innovation is, why it's so critical, and why everyone in the company needs to be involved. Again, this needs to come from the CEO and be echoed in harmony by all leaders. Leaders are the people who need to help staff have a sense of purpose and direction. Staff should be made to feel proud to innovate and have an impact on something they care about. Make it really easy for staff to contribute to innovation. Give them tools, a simple process and a strategic goal to contribute towards to help them on their way. But don't tell them what must innovate Give them freedom and give them a specific percentage of their work time to pursue their innovation projects. Don't expect staff to use their leisure time to do more work for the company. Let people know how they'll be rewarded or recognized for their innovation efforts and how the company's innovation metrics work and what the innovation process is, and make it very clear that failure is okay. I think the phrase fail fast, fail often is an unfortunate one because it sets the wrong tone. In my view, I prefer something a little bit more positive, such as Fail fast and learn fast or Fail fast, succeed faster. Google famously has its own nine principles of innovation which you might like to look up and take some inspiration from. From 1 to 9 they are innovation comes from anywhere. Focus on the user. Aim to be 10 times better. Bet on technical insights, Ship and iterate give employees 20% time default to open processes Fail well and have a mission that matters now that we've considered the cultural side of innovation, there also needs to be a process to help cultivate, capture and manage the stream of ideas that are going to be coming from the staff across the organization. Just like any other business function, innovation is a business function that needs to be managed. Most innovation processes will reflect something along the lines of strategic thinking, brainstorming, prototyping, testing, feedback, development, and commercialization. I'm going to take a closer look at the design thinking process which first defines the problem and then implements the solutions, always with the needs of the user demographic at the core of concept development. It's a process which focuses on need finding, understanding, creating, thinking and doing. Go to Google and search for Boot Camp Bootleg. You should find a 47 page PDF published by the D School at Stanford University which provides a lot more detail about the design thinking process. But let me just touch on each of the five steps here which any organization could adopt. So the five steps are Empathize, Define, ideate, Prototype, and Test. To empathize is to work to fully understand the experience of the user for whom you're designing. Do this through observation, interaction and immersing yourself in their experiences. To define is to process and synthesize the findings from your empathy work in order to form a user point of view that you will address with your design. To ideate is to explore a wide variety of possible solutions through generating a large quantity of diverse possible solutions, allowing you to step beyond the obvious and explore a range of ideas. To prototype is to transform your ideas into a physical form so that you can experience and interact with them and in the process learn and develop more empathy to test is to try out high resolution products and use observations and feedback to refine prototypes. Learn more about the user and refine your original point of view. What I've just described are very high level and address the act of innovation. It's also really important to establish a process which helps staff know what the steps are to enter the innovation process, how they get funding and what happens throughout their entire innovation journey, from having an idea right through to being commercialized if successful.

If you want to take your transformation capabilities and and credentials to the next level, go to studythrive.com.