Successful enterprise innovation requires reassessing most elements of a business. And, because new approaches so often require restructuring, rethinking, reworking, trimming the fat, and changing direction, one of the hardest things to do is justify all the change — and the resulting price tag.
Despite its crucial status, innovation funding is regularly overlooked or left out until it can no longer be easily ignored. In a recent blog, VP & Head of RoW Innovation Services Matt Chapman discussed the necessary but difficult task of developing a working innovation funding model, and how the Innovation Maturity Assessment can help.
Read on for an excerpt from Chapman’s post.
Structure and Design
In building an Innovation Program there are many components you need to consider, including:
- Strategy
- Sponsorship & Funding
- Governance
- Process
- Culture
- Engagement
- Skills & Capabilities
- Implementation & Execution
- Measurement & Metrics
- Tools & Technologies
These in turn can be assessed and benchmarked through an Innovation Maturity Model that can help you identify where you are and how you can advance your program design. Interestingly, when you discuss how certain companies build and develop their innovation programs you come to realise that, whilst these have similarities, it’s the differences that can help you understand the steps to advance the state of the components from more novice states to advanced or even optimised ones. One of the most overlooked — yet key — components that need to be more fully appreciated and embraced is that of funding.
Key Drivers for Innovation Funding
In the past, like many other people of course, I have attended conferences to learn about the new things I could potentially bring to the innovation programs I help to design. Through presentations, round tables you start to hear about the constructs of other companies innovation programs and we all note down things to add to ours. During one such session the interesting topic of funding came up, and it is something I have been looking into for some time now, as I think it is often under appreciated in terms of it being a key driver of any innovation program.
At the table we had two completely different funding models from two different companies. The first model looked to discover new ideas that could add value to the business. Following their evaluation the best were then pitched to a panel of senior leaders and funding was then appointed if the leadership agreed with the Innovation Program Managers assessment. The Innovation Program Manager revealed how successful this funding model was for them and how his leadership team absolutely trusted him in the opportunities he raised as he continually demonstrated success and value.
The second model did pretty much the same to a point. It too looked to discover new ideas that could add value to the business. Following their evaluation, it diverged from Model 1 and the best ideas were then funded from a sizeable ($30m) Venture Capital Investment Fund the Innovation Program Manager had direct access to without having to go to senior leadership. This model was very successful too, as the Leadership team absolutely trusted him in the opportunities he raised as he continually demonstrated success and value.
Click here to read the full post on the Matt Chapman Blog.
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