How to achieve innovation goals with limited budget & resources

The economic outlook for 2023 is not that great. The IMF is predicting that while inflation globally might go down in 2023, economic growth is going to be subpar. And so what we're noticing within a lot of organizations that are trying to cope with this crisis is that they're cutting their budgets. And of course, innovation is not immune to this. With budgets getting cut across the board, innovation budgets are also getting cut. And so the question that we're getting from the innovation teams and leaders that we work with is with my budget getting cut in 2023, how do I accomplish my innovation goals? How do I hit my innovation goals for 2023 with limited resources and limited budget? So one of the things that we have to address right now, which is kind of like a pet peeve of mine, is this idea that efficiency innovations that are focused on the core business are not real innovation. When we're faced with a crisis, we really need to think and understand that innovation sits on a continuum. You have your efficiency innovations that are focused on improving the core business. You have your sustaining innovations that build on your existing business model, but allow you to maybe enter new markets or make new products and services for your existing customers. And then you have your transformative innovations, which are your crazy plays, if you want to call them that, right? Your new business models, new value propositions that your company hasn't worked on. All three types of innovation are real innovation. What we need to realize is that, you know, investing in efficiency and sustaining innovation might be the best way to get, you know, short term wins for our organization. Efficiency innovations can have immediate and high impact on our organization. It can yield a lot of ROI for our organizations. I remember Alex Osterwald, our CEO, telling me that he just emerged from a conversation with a large global organization and he had noticed that within that organization there were a lot of efficiency innovation projects that would result in like, billions and billions of dollars of new revenue or billions of dollars in savings. And so you can see that efficiency innovations can have, like, high and immediate impact. Now, of course, the goal is not to just focus on efficiency innovations, because if we do that, we'll emerge from the crisis with an unbalanced portfolio within our organization. But it's still important to recognize that efficiency innovations, especially during a crisis, can really help the organization navigate and survive the crisis. So a big proportion of the investments that we're going to make as innovators 23 should focus on helping our company survive the crisis by focusing on efficiency and sustaining innovations, because they're the Ones that produce, you know, short term results for our company. And then we can take whatever limited resources we have left and apply those to transformative innovations. And so, since our transformative innovations are crazy plays and exploring the new, we really need to think about which transformative innovations we want to keep investing in. If we have limited resources, we have to really focus those resources on those transformative innovations that are closest to finding a business model that works, transformative innovations that are closest to success. And the best way to do that is to use the Innovation Project Scorecard from Strategizer. The Innovation Project Scorecard really helps us identify which innovation projects are the ones that are closest to success. As we, as we identify those projects, we're then able to double down investment in those projects. The Innovation Project Scorecard will help us choose which transformative innovations are closest to finding a business model that works. And the Innovation Project Scorecard uses evidence to do this. So we evaluate each project in terms of how close we are to understanding whether the value proposition resonates with customers. What level of quality of evidence do we have that we have the right price point? And so as we evaluate our projects in terms of what key resources we need, do we have the right resources? Do we have the right technologies? Have we figured out the value chain? You know, as we work to evaluate each project, we can really discover which projects are the ones that are making the most progress. And because our budgets are now limited, we can stop investing in the other projects and just double down our investment on those projects that are really showing progress and traction. So really, what we're talking about for 2023, where budgets are being cut within our organizations, is that innovators should really think about focusing on efficiency and sustaining innovations, because they're the ones that are likely to produce immediate short term results for our organization and then take whatever limited resources we have and then apply that to transformative innovation. But because we have limit now have limited resources for investing in transformative innovation, we really need to think about which transformative innovations we're going to keep investing in. We need to think about investing in only those transformative innovations that are showing evidence of progress and evidence of traction. The ultimate goal really for 2023 is for innovators to help their organizations navigate a crisis by using our tools and methodologies to create value for the companies that we work.