Diverse Ideas are the Lifeblood of Corporate Innovation
Too often corporate innovation is left to coming up with one good idea. Successful innovators develop methods for tapping a range of inputs to find those ideas that deliver outsized impact.
When most folks think of innovation, the assumption that it is a moment of divine inspiration. That singular stroke of genius that turns an insight into a novel and magical experience. While this romanticizing of innovation breakthroughs can drive investment and executive interest, ultimately, hope is not a reliable strategy. In the realm of innovation, where ideas are not just the seeds but the very lifeblood that drives progress, we need to find the right innovative idea, not just dream it. As red blood cells carry oxygen to our organs, it is the consistent stream of multiple number of ideas fuel the innovative process, energizing every endeavor with the promise of something better, something new.
And just like these blood cells bringing life to all our organs, it is the refinement of each idea, rather than its initial spark, that propels us toward successful growth and progress of true innovation. It's incredibly rare, almost a serendipitous fluke, for a novel concept to emerge fully formed during the initial ideation in the innovation process. Just as a gemstone need cutting and polishing, ideas need honing and perfecting.
And here's a sobering reality: most of these ideas don't lead to successful outcomes. The professor of corporate innovation, Clayton Christen himself claimed a staggering 95% of new products fail to make their mark in the market. The reasons for this are multifold: perhaps the idea was introduced at the wrong time, or it was solving the wrong problem. Sometimes it's the execution that's flawed or the business model isn't quite right. An idea might fail due to lack of market demand, being unprofitable, or simply misjudging customer needs.
Before you even start to build, test, and learn from an idea it's virtually impossible to distinguish the winning ideas from the failed ones. So, how does one hedge against this? As in most risky endeavors, leverage the power of diversification.
Gathering inputs from diverse sources is like having a rich and varied palette from which to paint your masterpiece. This should include ideas from internal teams through hackathons, innovation sprints, Research & Development (R&D) and good old suggestion boxes. Don’t overlook the ideas of internal teams and individuals solving problems day to day. They are a rich source of insight and inspiration. But you shouldn’t only harness the power of what lies inside. Looking externally, traditional market research, startup incubators, strategic partnerships, academic relationships, open innovation labs, and Customer Experience (CX) Labs and accelerators can provide fresh perspectives.
If you look across the most innovative companies, one of the few things they will have in common is continual mining of multiple sources for new innovation idea discovery. When I worked at Samsung running an internal innovation team, we were surrounded by inputs from other internal research labs, Samsung Next their startup incubator, partnerships with top universities such as MIT, Pratt and Stanford, internal R&D teams in AI, robotics and components, global learnings from scaled product and marketing teams, as well as a vibrant community of designers, researchers and startups. This continual pipeline of ideas and inspiration was the fuel that drove continual market share growth across categories.
And this isn't limited to technology companies, pharmaceutical companies, health insurance companies, banks, even CPG companies invest time and effort across a range of diverse inputs to drive innovation growth. This because the process of ideation should not be a sporadic burst of inspiration but rather a continuous flow of insights. Drawing from cross-industry and cross-functional sources, ideas can be clustered around core areas of focus to reinforce nascent ideas or develop brand new areas of opportunity. Overall, the emphasis is firmly on developing a robust pipeline of potential innovations.
With all these signals coming in, scaled innovation groups build a database of insights to better track what is coming in and to ensure teams don't waste effort in retreading the same worn paths. However, it is crucial to ensure that this database is more than just a jumbled list of ideas. Instead, it should serve as a meticulously catalogued inventory, ready to be tapped into for ongoing and future projects to provide transparency and expertise.
Consistently, innovation isn't about waiting for that proverbial lightbulb moment. It's about constantly nurturing and refining a stream of ideas, understanding that their origins can be as varied as the solutions they promise to deliver. This relentless pursuit of improvement and the tireless quest for a better way are what keep the wheels of innovation turning, ever forward, ever onward.