Innovation should be a regular topic item on the agenda of company board meetings. If you have not had a fundamental conversation about innovation with your key corporate stakeholders and senior executives then these are some of the questions and topics to discuss at the first such meeting.
- What is the vision for our organization? Where are we headed?
- What is our business strategy to achieve the vision?
- What role will innovation play in delivering on our strategy?
- Where do we need innovation – products, services, processes, marketing, sectors etc?
- How good are we at innovation today? What is impeding innovation in the business?
- What type of product innovation do we need? How much incremental and how much radical?
- What is our attitude to risk? How big are the bets we want to place?
- What resources are we going to allocate for innovation – budget and people?
- What metrics will we use? How will we measure progress?
- What processes should we put in place to empower people to innovate?
When you seem to reach agreement on any of these topics it is important to play back the understanding. What does this mean? What will we do differently? What will we not do? How much are we prepared to lose? And so on. Document the key points. It is important that everyone is on the same page regarding goals and expectations.
Once the top level innovation strategy is agreed then progress should be regularly monitored at future meetings. Topics might include:
- How are we doing against our innovation metrics and KPIs?
- Are all our functions aligned on this?
- What impediments are we finding in terms of attitudes, mindsets, skills etc?
- Are we getting enough good ideas? Are we building enough prototypes? Are our innovation processes working?
- Do we have some success stories to share?
It is easy for innovation to slip down the agenda because there are so many other pressing issues. Most organizations have urgent crises to deal with. Everybody will initially agree the need for innovation but then it slips down the priority list. So keep it on the agenda, review progress, allocate resources and celebrate success.
Finally a tip I heard from Sue Jefferson who led innovation at McCain Foods. She was speaking on these topics at a CIO conference in London. When something goes wrong – for example a new product flops – do not ask, ‘What went wrong?’ It is a rather aggressive question which implies blame. Instead ask, ‘What was missing?’ This more subtle approach will elicit the issues and problems that need to be addressed.
—
This post was previously published on Destination Innovation.
***
Join The Good Men Project as a Premium Member today.
All Premium Members get to view The Good Men Project with NO ADS.
A $50 annual membership gives you an all access pass. You can be a part of every call, group, class and community.
A $25 annual membership gives you access to one class, one Social Interest group and our online communities.
A $12 annual membership gives you access to our Friday calls with the publisher, our online community.
Register New Account
Need more info? A complete list of benefits is here.
—
Photo credit: iStock