The Innovation Matrix - a Tool to define your innovation strategy (part1)

Hello everyone. Hi, I'm Vincent Bilin. I'm Innovation Consultant at Board of Innovation and I'm going to share this latest tool with you, which is the Innovation Matrix. The Innovation Matrix will help you to find the innovation strategy that actually fits your organization best. The webinar this recording is actually structured in two main parts. The first part will be the explanation of the Matrix itself. The second part will be focusing on a deep dive on each of the different initiatives. In this presentation, I'll also share different cases and examples on how we've used this tool or how these initiatives were perceived by our customers. So let's start with it. First of all, I'll quickly introduce myself. I'm Vincent Guidin. I'm Innovation Consultant at Board of Innovation, or as you would call it, Innovation Strategist. Since I supported these organizations with the setup and design of their innovation initiatives or with the execution of them generally, I see myself as a corporate accelerator because I want to speed up innovation programs. I want to speed up the way that they launch new projects. And a way on how that I gained this skill is probably also because of some of the side projects that I'm doing or that I did in my side life as an entrepreneur and also with my background as a product designer. Let's do a little deep dive on Board of Innovation. So who is Board of Innovation? Well, I'll explain it to you via our goal, our mission, and it's our mission to make corporates innovate like startups, mixing proven methods from design thinking and the lean startup. And we do this for Fortune 500s and global innovation leaders like you can see them over here. And we do that on a global scale, so we do that around the globe. But our headquarters are based in Antwerp in Belgium. We have a very strong network and culture of sharing. That's why we also have a SlideShare channel with a lot of followers and all of the presentations just like this one will appear on SlideShare. On the other hand, definitely subscribe to our newsletter because a lot of tools and inspiration is also shared here. On the other hand, as the last part, our LinkedIn group is definitely also an interesting one. So make sure to check it out. Let's start right away with the first part on the Innovation Matrix. How does it work? Well, I'll first start off with a little explanation on how I came up with this tool. Well, what I've noticed out of working together with a lot of organizations, some of which you can see over here, that I've supported on the Design of innovation programs is that there's one clear thing, and that is innovation is something that is difficult to grasp and that is constantly changing over time. And that path, that change is something that is not linear. It's not easy to compare one initiative to the other. That's why often questions pop up, like, how can we achieve more results from our innovation efforts? Or how can our organization cope with innovation? What is the best initiatives for us, best initiative for us, and how can we embed it? If we did something, how can we actually embed it more structurally? So these are all questions that we get when we do these sessions, when we do the support of these organizations. So that is a very normal thing, because we need to change our behaviors in order to get better results. And there's no one solution. There's actually a galaxy of innovation formats out there. You can have incubators, accelerators, workshops, innovation centers, whatever. But the key question stays, how can I choose the best formats that fits my organization? And as my first life as a designer and with my entrepreneurial spirit, I always try to simplify and explain things visually to help people, to make decisions easier. So that's also what I did here. Took a piece of paper and tried to put together some of the learnings that I got out of different interactions with these organizations. One of the key things that I came up with is that for me, the easiest way to compare one to the other initiative was via two vital parameters. The first one is capabilities. What do we want to focus on? Do we want to focus on the growth of internal capabilities or external capabilities? Or do we prefer to mix one and the other? On the other hand, the commitment. How committed are we to bring this idea, this initiative, to the next level? How structurally do we want to embed this in the organization? And these two things in comparison to the other, if you put them next to each other, you get some sort of a matrix. You get an overview of, on one hand, commitments, and on the other hand, the capability. On this matrix, I've tried to identify the. I've tried to map out the nine key initiatives that I've encountered. This doesn't include all the initiatives that was absolutely not the goal. The goal was to identify those that at this stage, to me were seen as most relevant. Definitely there's a lot of other initiatives that can be taken into account, but in this way, I try to simplify it and just focus on the nine ones that I've came across with the most. And it's funny to see that when I've Shared this tool. When I've used it in workshops, the feedback was already great of people that really said it really helps to structure our thinking and to explain our story. But even when we shared it online, the feedback was great. People that we never worked with even contacted us and said it really helped us. It helped me to explain our initiatives, to map out what we're doing already, and to see potential future opportunities. So, the innovation matrix. Let's dive into the six different patterns that you can see in this matrix. These six different patterns will help you to identify the format that is most useful for your organization. Let's dive in first at the right hand side of this matrix, meaning the internal capabilities. So first of all, do you want to grow these internal capabilities? That's the key question. Do you want to build the culture of innovation? Do to you want, you want to change the people in the organization, then these formats are the ones for you. Innovation workshops, community of practice, or at the end a center of excellence might do the trick. Because what you can see is that there's a heavy pressure to transform organizations. The business that you did 10 years ago won't be the same in 10 years from now. And in order to achieve that, to achieve that change, probably these internal changes can happen through innovation workshops, building communities and centers of excellence. I'll explain each of these initiatives in the second part of this recording. The second part that I. The second pattern that you see is the pattern of a mixed capability where you take internal entrepreneurs and you bring them outside of the organization. So the concept of intrapreneurship, how can an internal employee become an actual entrepreneur? Examples would be design sprints, internal accelerators, or emerging business areas. Each one of them grows in maturity, so the more you go up, the more mature or more structurally committed these initiatives are. So an example of this would be a case that I've experienced very closely with Unilin. Unilin is a global producer of flooring solutions and together with them we've shaped program, an internal accelerator where we took the high profiles, the top people within the organization. We took them outside of their regular way of working for six months and at the end they pitched their results to top management and the result was great. Some of the startups actually got funding and grew their idea. And on the other hand, real entrepreneurial people were sparked and empowered. The third pattern that you can see in this matrix is the pattern of external capabilities. If you decided that internal change might happen or might not happen, you are interested to actually grow your business quicker. And with the help of external people, external assets, then these initiatives might be interesting for you. I'm talking about innovation challenges, external incubators, startup funds. These type of things are really ways to take things that are not within your organization, that are too radical maybe, and bring them in your company. A note here is that it's not the easiest activity. So it's definitely something that is very risky, not always easy to integrate with your core business. So definitely spread risk. Identify multiple ways of collaborating with the external world. A fourth pattern that you can see is based on the horizontal axis, on the axis of commitment. When you identify when you want to start something new, when you want to start a new initiative, what you need to do is start simple, start small. This is really a lean way to do things. Experiment, learn from it and then grow it. Examples of this would be innovation challenges, design Sprint or a very short innovation workshop. These things really help you to learn to test and try out something new. And then based on those learnings, you can grow your commitment over time. A very important note here is that since it's a very short timing, it's very important to frame them very short. So to manage these expectations and to also frame your problem statement at the start very well. So know very well what you want to get out of it. Otherwise you will not get the result that you've hoped for. It's only a short period of time, so you can only achieve the things that you have set out within that problem statement. A second sorry. A fifth pattern that you can identify is the pattern on taking those non structural initiatives to the next level. How can you do that? By testing out external incubators, internal accelerators or communities of practice. Once, for example, an innovation workshop worked very well and you've identified new digital opportunities and a few intrapreneurs are actually really interested to grow business ideas within the organization. Give them the space. Give them the space as an internal accelerator to actually grow these ideas over time. On the other hand, if skills like business model, innovation, design thinking need to grow, a community of practice might be the good way to grow that maturity. The sixth pattern that you can see in this matrix is the top part where you have a very structural commitment on each of the capabilities. Examples on an external way would be a startup fund, on an internal way would be a center of excellence and maybe in between an emerging business area. As I said, I'll explain each one of those in more detail in the next part of this video. So these three examples of initiatives could be the way for you to embed innovation. If you want to do it structurally, if you want to do it over time, if you want to have multiple years of innovative growth, then probably these initiatives or these programs can help you to do that. So these were six patterns that you can see in the Matrix of innovation. Well, I would like to share some insights of an organization that I've also worked with very closely that share their experience on how this brings value to them. I've worked together closely, as I said, with Engie, and we've used this matrix in order for them to map out all the initiatives that they were doing and see, okay, which one, what is for us, the next step. And that is what it's definitely all about, to identify what are we doing, where do we see new opportunities, and what comes next. So if you ever have challenges like these, definitely print out a tool, have a discussion with your team, and identify what do we have today and where do we want to be tomorrow? So this summarizes the first part of this recording. And in the next part, I'll explain a bit more about each of the different initiatives, each of the nine initiatives in matrix.