Probably the most common mistake made in enterprise innovation programs is believing that what’s missing are great ideas. But it’s not ideation that’s lacking — it’s the process of finding viable ideas and taking them from suggestion to reality. For example, PwC’s Norman Lewis recently told us that “[PwC doesn’t] want 10,000 ideas. We want [people] to tell us what are good ideas and what aren’t.”
Last week, Forbes contributor Peter Hinssen spoke with MasterCard CINO Garry Lyons about what it means to go beyond ideation in enterprise innovation programs. The conversation struck very close to home for us on many levels as they discussed the importance of crowdsourcing ideas, innovation management tools, repeatable processes, and bringing innovation initiatives out of R&D and into the hands of all employees.
Innovation: The Art, Science, and Structure
How many times has an awesome idea failed to stick simply because it wasn’t aligned to the company strategy? Still, it’s a two-way street. If employees are kept in the dark about corporate goals and challenges, they can’t come up with helpful solutions; similarly, execs need to be flexible, and realize that someone out in the crowd might have a suggestion that makes more sense than the existing game plan. Says Lyons:
“I always say that innovation is a repeatable process. It’s an art and a science. And like any science, you need structured techniques to get results. The first step should be a clearly defined problem statement. If you can’t clearly define the business challenge you’re attempting to solve for, then you’re wasting your time! But you also need to make sure that your innovation goals are largely aligned with your company’s strategy, otherwise it’s an exercise in futility. You should aim for 80% of your innovation objectives to be aligned with your company’s wider strategy and allow 20% to be a bit more out there.”
Equally necessary is establishing a protocol. After all, bringing just one idea to fruition isn’t going to cut it:
“The next step is to develop structured processes which can take you from ideation, through prototyping and user feedback, and (when ready) into commercialization. But at the same time you have to think lean and act agile. You need techniques and methodologies to improve all aspects of the product development lifecycle: from the quantity and (more importantly) quality of the ideas that you generate to the way that you prototype; the way you test and iterate; the way you pilot; and the way you scale. And remember that you should not scale until you have done sufficient user testing and know that you have something which people actually want (usually because it seamlessly solves a consumer pain-point or addresses a specific need).”
No Execution, No Innovation
Of course, the point of gathering hundreds, perhaps thousands, of ideas from across a company is not to boast how smart your employees are (though that is a nice bonus). Rather, it’s to be sure that you’re not missing out on any potential opportunities to do business better, engage your employees more effectively, develop market-leading products, and drive customer satisfaction and loyalty.
“At MasterCard Labs we say that innovation without execution is only ideation,” says Lyons. “That’s why we’ve created a suite of Innovation Programs which enable us to generate new ideas from a variety of sources, and fast-track the best ideas from concept to prototype and into market faster than ever before. When our most promising pilots are ready for commercialization, we move them into our “Incubation” team, where they are assigned dedicated resources who work like a lean startup to fast-track to market. Clear metrics are installed up front when projects are ready for pilot: number of users, number of transactions, etc. We never use revenue as a metric at the starting point, though. Revenue is a long term result when it comes to disruptive innovations.”
And, perhaps our favorite tidbit:
“The final point I want to make is that innovation should not be limited to the R&D department: it is everyone’s job. At MasterCard, we recognize that good ideas come from a variety of sources so we involve as many people as possible: from business units, employees as individuals, customers, partners, universities as well the developer community. You simply cannot innovate alone. You need to involve all stakeholders.”
Read the full article here.
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