10 Must-Haves to Include in Your Innovation Strategy
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Over the past two years I’ve worked with a number of organisations to help them develop their strategy for innovation. In that time, I haven’t come across many (any), organisations that have already have strategy for innovation. The most I see is “let’s teach our staff creativity”, and “let’s start a suggestion box”. One thing I know for certain is that without a deliberate strategy for innovation, it quickly gets subsumed by business as usual.
In my work with clients, here’s 10 elements that consistently arise that need to be dealt with in order to develop an effective innovation strategies. We develop these over a 3 day workshop.
- Why? Beyond the financial return – what are the reasons you want to be innovative?
- What role will innovation play in your organisation? Initiator, first follower, process improvement, new product development?
- Scanning for ideas. Where will you look for ideas externally? How will you collect ideas internally?
- Culture. How does your culture support/dampen innovation? What will you do about it?
- Transition. Is your existing culture supportive or hostile to innovation? Will you need to have steps in place to transition to your new, desired innovative workplace?
- Who is going to be accountable for innovation?
- Measure and maintain. How will you measure innovation? How will you keep innovation going?
- Reward and recognition. How do reward and recognise innovation? Will it be integrated with your existing reward and recognition program?
- How will you vet idea and manage a portfolio of ideas?
- Structural issues. What effect does the organisation of your organisation have on innovation? What changes will you need to make?
So – do you have an innovation strategy in your organisation or have you seen one? What does it include? Please pop a comment here and share :).
