Insights into corporate innovation

Last week I was over in Leeds at a Corporate IT Forum day dedicated to Innovation. The presentations were from those who were shortlisted for awards last year at the Real IT Awards - we were lucky enough to win.

It's great when you turn up at these events to find a bunch of like minded individuals and if willingness to innovate was a realistic economic indicator, the national debt would be history by this time next year (well, ok, the year after).

After presentations from ourselves (SABIC Petrochemicals), Virgin Atlantic and Co-operative Financial Services, we had a number of open discussion sessions. Some common themes came out.

1. Creating time to develop an innovation is more important than funding

2. Invest small, fail fast

3. Innovations have to prove themselves quickly in delivery

Now, to my mind that reads like a list a start-up would make, rather than your average corporate. Perhaps the difference is relative scale.

For example, the corporate guys have a multi-billion pound turnover of which a relatively insignificant amount is dedicated to innovation. Start-ups have a relatively tiny turnover but most of it is dedicated to trying new things.

Corporate innovation teams are very small and very light. They typically use agile approaches to achieve something quickly and are very good at taking square pegs (both systems and people) and making them work in round holes. Start-up teams have less room for manouevre both in terms of systems and people; every blind alley or failed development is so much more expensive to them.

But it's clear that the corporate guys are learning lots from the typical agile startup. They're creating the time and space and trying to fill it with the right people. The number of attendees that referred to 'disrupting' tech was very notable.

Here were the key points from my presentation (prz available if req'd):

1. Focus on what you do; no point innovating in widget design if you're not a widget company
2. Approach innovation consistently
3. Key point: Take the straightest line to business value
1. Processes
1. How do you initiate change?
2. What happens to it then?
3. Ensure strategic alignment - or otherwise validate - and good oversight
4. Stretch evaluation into the business
5. Try lots fast
2. Culture is the result of a feedback loop
1. Let's not reorganise!
2. Don't try to mandate creativity
3. Give your people space and time and guide them in filling it
4. Improve capability and focus it on your business
3. Enable the business to add value - to itself
1. Provide open platforms, not closed tools
2. Encourage users in extending platforms inexpensively to get continual return for minimal investment
3. Do what you do best...and link to the rest
4. Focused trojan mice
5. Use platforms that encourage co-development and formation of communities

I think most people could take these key messages and build something around them for their organisation.

Cheers
Tim