Recipes for Effective Corporate Innovation
Learn how experimentation and the fail-safe, fail-fast principle accelerate the innovation process.
‘The Innovation Mode’ helps Innovators, Chief Innovation Officers and Business Leaders understand how to optimize the Innovation process in a corporate environment.
The book provides strategic advice and unique insights on technologies, processes, and methodologies that empower business leaders to embed real innovation into their corporate reality. The book helps business and technology leaders shape an innovation transformation journey and introduce organizational entities such as the ‘prototype factory’ the ‘innovation dream team’, maker spaces, and innovation labs.
“An exceptional book – inspiring, thoughtful, and practical. I highly recommend it to corporate leaders who are keen on making their vision of Innovation a reality.”
— P. Drougkas, Board Member, Banking
Share the Future of Innovation
Part I - The Fundamentals of Innovation
Innovation (Re) Defined
Novelty
Invention
Innovation as an Outcome
Innovation as an Opportunity
Innovation as a Function of the Organization
The Innovative Organization
Classification of Innovation
Innovation in the Era of AI
Why do companies fail to Innovate?
The Innovation Mode
A Culture for Innovation
The Value System of Innovation Culture
The True Innovator
Blockers of Innovation
What Innovators Expect
Fixing the Innovation Culture
Contextualize Innovation
Redefine Failure
Hack the Organizational Structure
Educate the Innovators
Become Responsive
Connect with the Community of Innovators
Join a Continual Improvement Mode
A Framework for Innovation
Innovation as a “Black Box”
Inside the Black Box: Innovation Capabilities
Innovation Inputs: Context
Innovation Outputs: Artifacts
Innovation Behaviors and Micro-Roles
The Role of Office Space and Equipment
Innovation Events
The Innovation Hub
Part II - Managing Ideas
A Universal Model for Ideas
The Universal Idea Model
A Graph of Ideas
The Extended Idea Model
The Problem, Defined
Managing Ideas
Idea Management: The Classic Way
Idea Management: The Agile Way
Assessing Ideas
Challenges and Risks
The Always-On Ideas Channel
A Streamlined Ideation Process
A Smart Idea Intake Experience
The Idea Evaluation Toolkit
Content Discovery APIs
Idea Discovery and Distribution
Smart Collaboration Surface
Performance and Insights
Inspire, Share, Innovate
Part III - Innovation Opportunities
Brainstorming
The “Classic” Business Brainstorming
The Enhanced Brainstorming
The Data-Driven Brainstorming
Brainstorming with a Little Help from AI
Hackathons
The Structure of a Hackathon
The Design Time: Shaping the Right Hackathon
The Lead Time: Getting Ready for “Hacking”
The Run-Time: “Hacking” in Progress
The Pitch Time: Selecting the Winners
Post-Hackathon: Measuring Success
The Connected Hackathon
From Ideas to Opportunities
Building Prototypes
The Makerspace
Design Sprints
The Prototype Factory
How All Fit Together
From Opportunities to Products
The Waterfall Way
The Agile Way
The Power of User Stories
What Is the “Minimum Viable Product”?
From a Big Problem to Solve, to a Great Product to Build
Continual Product Improvement
Part IV - Towards the Innovation Mode
Measuring Innovation
The Macro View: Innovation Performance at the Corporate Level
The Micro View: Innovation Performance at the Individual Level
The Innovation Insights Store
The Innovation Transformation Program
The Innovation Masterplan
The Seven Innovation States of a Corporation
The Path to the Innovation Mode
The “Dream Team” of Innovation
The Structure of the Innovation Program
Prepare the Innovation Program
Bootstrap Innovation
Ignite Innovation
Connect Innovation
Empower Innovation
Scale-Up Innovation
Embed Innovation
Final Remarks
“A must-read. Corporate leaders will get inspired and learn how to design and execute great innovation programs.”
— Dimitris Livas, Managing Partner/ CEO, Agile Actors
An excerpt from ‘The Innovation Mode’
Establishing a truly innovative company is difficult—it takes time and requires determination in driving a massive cultural, structural, and technological change. True innovation goes beyond isolated programs, techy labs, hackathons, fancy collaboration spaces, and bold innovation titles. While all of these are very important when considered in the right context, the “innovation mode” refers to much more than that: a drastically different approach to running a business.
“True innovation goes beyond isolated programs, techy labs, hackathons, fancy collaboration spaces, and bold innovation titles.”
“Conventional” companies are configured to go after their ambitious short-term financial targets. They tend to protect their established position in the market, and they are uncomfortable with potential disruptions. In such environments, innovation is usually perceived as a business luxury or just as an opportunity to boost employee morale and drive publicity. Moreover, it is not uncommon to see middle or upper management being unsupportive of innovation—they often perceive it as a potential disruptor of the rhythm of business.
In contrast, companies operating in the “innovation mode” are optimized not only to improve revenue streams and profits but also to pursue long-term success and expansion to new areas, by being highly adaptable. Such companies do not settle; they do not restfully or proudly enjoy the status quo and their position in the market; they stay at the edge by leveraging their reflex advantage, their ability to sense and react fast. The key to this adaptive nature is the strong connection with the market and the rapidly changing technological landscape: innovative companies are very effective in identifying emerging patterns and insights. They feed this external stimulus into the innovation process to inspire ideation and concept generation. Doing this in a systematic way allows them to maintain a portfolio of opportunities and benefit from their ability to test them fast and make the right decisions.
Organizations evolve while in an infinite loop of experimentation, learning, and improvement—a continuous process that leads to better results for customers, shareholders, the environment, and society. At the cultural level, the “innovation mode” introduces a “new” way of working, putting emphasis on a sharing, collaboration, and experimentation culture. People across levels and specialties are tuned to challenge the established, cooperate and contribute, not only by sharing ideas and solutions but also by articulating problems worth solving and challenging questions that need to be answered.
“When in the innovation mode, organizations embrace innovation as a means of serving their bold purpose.”
This contribution comes naturally—simply because people believe in the purpose of the company, the vision of the product; they know that innovation is appreciated by the leadership and used in “real-world” scenarios. Innovators are comfortable experimenting with prototypes and they know how to move them through the validation process— they have a mindset that can handle failure. They are able to balance big thinking and business reality as needed— according to the state and the needs of the business— without disrupting its production and operational aspects.
On the other hand, leaders demonstrate their support for innovation by accepting failure as part of the process and by acknowledging the value of continuous improvement through experimentation. They understand and appreciate the importance of innovation, and they believe in ideas as the source of differentiation. Beyond ideas, leaders realize that the organization needs to systematically evaluate innovation opportunities for better products, business models, or even new markets; they genuinely support the formation of a community of innovators and provide the technical means that encourage people to engage with innovation.
[…] leaders demonstrate their support for innovation by accepting failure as part of the process and by acknowledging the value of continuous improvement through experimentation.
When in the innovation mode, organizations embrace innovation as a means of serving their bold purpose: people celebrate the outcomes, not necessarily the innovation process itself. This ongoing pursuit of opportunities is assisted by the innovation intelligence service—a “nervous system” powered by human and machine intelligence—that senses emerging patterns and reacts by triggering the opportunity discovery process. The actual reaction takes the form of problem exploration, ideation, and prototyping and eventually leads to experiments, new features, products, or business models. This mechanism raises awareness of the global economic system and helps the organization to convert market insights into competitive advantages.
Getting to the innovation mode takes time and requires both intelligent design and evolution: innovation is initially architected into the organizational structure and engineered into the “operating system” of the company, but it then evolves naturally, through experimentation, adaptation, and learning loops. In every iteration, the organization becomes smarter and more agile—as technology improves, and the innovation culture grows across levels, departments, teams, and disciplines. The organization eventually flattens—groups and divisions become less rigid and less hierarchical: they converge to a broader community of ambitious, capable, and highly motivated innovators.
“Innovation is initially architected into the organizational structure and engineered into the “operating system” of the company.
When this transition is achieved, the need for special programs and ad hoc innovation initiatives gradually fades out: the innovation program blends with other business activities and becomes part of the foundation of the organization. Innovation endeavors get embedded in daily routines, in the standard ways of collaboration, decision-making, and product development.
In this mode, the organization performs better, not only in terms of innovation but in every dimension—as a whole: people and teams communicate and collaborate more effectively; they leverage the embedded innovation system, the accumulated knowledge, and the spirit of innovation to better serve the bold organizational purpose. When operating in this mode, innovation ‘simply happens’.
When operating in this mode, innovation ‘simply happens.’
Excerpt from “The Innovation Mode” - read also the preface of the book here.
