The following article is taken from an interview with partner, Matthew Kelly.
I’m thinking about a call I had earlier today that contained great questions: What happens to ideas after a sprint? What happens with other people that come to us with an idea they want to advance?
Here’s how I’d answer those questions: An innovation center, which is a physical or digital space designed to capture new ideas and promote creative problem-solving.
It sounds nebulous, sure, but we’ve created successful innovation centers by strictly adhering to critical pillars. There are a few things (certainly not an all inclusive list) that an Innovation Center/Engine/Hub should consider.
OK, commence my improvised (now-edited) ramble…
There should be a mechanism for people to submit ideas.
Idea Management. Many systems can facilitate this – BUT the culture and process of idea recognition are critical. I have seen, too many times, idea portals that are essentially black holes. This is worse than having nothing at all; it actually corrodes the culture.
Ideas must be acknowledged – people will understand that most ideas will not be invested in. Bonus points if ideas don’t just enter a linear funnel from employees to the “innovation overseers…” ways for communities to engage with submitted ideas and celebrate ideas are very nice (but take bandwidth).
There should be a process for nurturing ideas that show promise.
We (and many others) use design sprints to test concepts and ground them in enough research to see if they merit further advancement. They can also be moved to another team or department (but please beware of the “pitching it over the fence” phenomenon; concepts get chucked to another group, losing all their momentum, energy, and sometimes even coherence.)
As you know, sprints should be short and efficient – their goal is to validate assumptions and user needs – if those criteria are “passed,” they potentially lead to another sprint. For example, we often start projects with “discovery sprints” that will end in a gallery of very early solution concepts.
The ones that interest leadership might advance to a “prototyping sprint” where the idea will be fleshed out, and the interaction with others will be around their reactions to a real prototype (rather than the conversations being about mining for deeper understanding of the challenge and stakeholders, as we are currently doing).
There should be a way to celebrate success and foster innovation through storytelling.
Blogs, short videos, releasing early prototypes to the larger audience to model behavior, etc. People really respond to seeing the work that their colleagues do. This – along with the super important “clearly demonstrable buy-in from senior leadership” (in other words, permission to explore new ideas) – is what builds the atmosphere and mutual inspiration that can really support culture change.
Cultural change is extremely hard, takes time, and can’t be forced (as Dave Gray says, “people aren’t cyborgs; you can’t just reprogram them”). But an innovation center can create the conditions that make it more likely and durable. Storytelling is critical… and it brings joy to it all.
There should be training and education.
It can be done in so many ways. Still, it is wonderful if there is a blend of digital, “on-demand” content, in-person experiences, and permission & resources to individually seek outside content that people are personally drawn to.
I have found that the most effective learning occurs when folks work on a real project – it makes it real and immediate.
The Innovation Center Should Have a Clear Strategy
The innovation center has a clear strategy that includes areas of interest for the organization, strategy with the external environment (partners, the community, etc.), investment/acquisition criteria, and strategy.
There’s a lot to get into here, but “innovation challenges” can focus the brainpower of the group on topics that resonate with the organizational strategy and plan.
We do a lot of work with health systems, so the external environment one is big. How do we understand the communities we serve? What are our commitments around inclusivity for ideas that directly impact people’s lives?
Mergers and acquisitions are, I confess, not a great area of strength for me. Still, I do know that a lot of innovation centers I work with invest in startups and even fully acquire other organizations. Another extension of the innovation center into… really big business and dollars… is the role that it plays in the product development and launch cycle (how far beyond concepts, prototypes, and business modeling does your remit go? Do you want to be building tangible things?… it is awesome if you do, but it is a different level of investment).
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