9 Indicators That Prove That Your Innovation Programme Will Fail

and 13 actions to make it successful today.

curated by @arnevbalen

9 INDICATORSthat prove that yourInnovation Program

I S FA I L I N G

9 out of 10Corporate Innovation Programs fail. So bad.

9 sentencesyou should

never hear

13 solutionsyou can

apply today

in this slideshow

in a Corporate Innovation Program to make it successful

“Our Dev/Engineers have no direct contact with clients”.

Huston says:

1/*

* The image is a search result from an image archive. Reality may differ.

Sales and customer service departments are specialized in solving client problems with off-the-shelf solutions. Coming up with an experiment doesn’t fit their job description and will have a negative effect on their performance review.

Product development and engineers expect sales and marketing departments to deliver them client insights to design more relevant products and services.

The innovative solution doesn’t match customer expectations. Oh man, another unhappy customer.

“Our Dev/Engineers have no direct contact with clients”.

Go Agile

Buddy up an internal project manager with a

sales rep and evaluate them as a team like agile

organizations do.

what you can do “Our Dev/Engineers have no direct contact with clients”.

“The KPIs in our BU are linked to Investment and Return”.

Huston says:

2/

Managers have their own KPI’s and

growth objectives. If Manager X decides

to invest in an innovation program (e.g.

Innovation Accelerator) to create new

disruptive revenue streams for his Business

unit, the ideas will be created around

those objectives. Now imagine one of the

accelerator teams realizing that they should

pivot away from the original scope to keep

a viable idea relevant for the company as a

whole. Few managers will allow the team

to pivot in a way that another business unit

takes all the revenues.

Choose cross-departmental funds

Finance uncertain projects with a cross-

departmental-fund (e.g. by CEO office) to

maximize pivot possibilities (and potential value

for the company).

what you can do “The KPIs in our BU are linked to Investment and Return”.

Thomson Reuters Catalyst Fund funds 30

projects every year and supports them with

lean startup coaching and best practices.

best practice

“Our governance slows down (or kills) every new initiatives”.

Huston says:

3/

Imagine having 7 management

layers between an employee with

a brilliant idea and the director

that needs to allocate the budget

to make it happen. Each manager

will shape the idea to different

KPI’s and personal preferences.

All interesting and differentiating

factors, that make the idea

brilliant, will be gone by the time

an implementation decision can

be made.

Micro-finance ideas, no string attached.

Give your employees some funds they can invest as they

wish. They’ll find the way to make the most of them to

improve their own way of working, or to initiate new

projects. And in the end, regardless the results, this also

incentivizes some healthy intraneurship in the company.

what you can do “Our governance slows down (or kills) every new initiatives”.

best practice

At Board of Innovation , all employees

have an experiment budget (€50/month)

to be used without questions asked.

With its Adobe Kickbox, Adobe gives their

innovation teams a $1000 prepaid credit

card to enable and accelerate intrapreneurs.

best practice

“Let’s go on, we already spent 100k in this project”.

Huston says:

4/

Killing projects is an hard thing to do for both

managers and project teams. Why? Firstly, it

transforms all investments in the project into costs.

Secondly, all people involved will have to accept

that they failed and let go of the project. Lastly, it’s

a challenge to know when a team tried everything

possible to make a project work.

“Let’s go on, we already spent 100k in this project”.

Create a Lab environment where failure is part of the game.

Create sidetracks for innovation projects (e.g. Labs, Accelerators,

Boot-Camps, Pressure cookers, Hackathons, etc.) that allow

intrapreneurs to pitch their results and call to action directly to key

decision makers, possibly top-management.

what you can do “Let’s go on, we already spent 100k in this project”.

Make the Excel sheet decide for you.

Lean startup uses evidence-based to proof if a project can or will not

work. Many teams entering our corporate accelerator programs

are working on never-ending-money-draining projects, often

kept alive by internal politics. Using lean startup principles

in a safe environment is a perfect way to either kill or define

first implementable steps for the project.

what you can do “Let’s go on, we already spent 100k in this project”.

Call it Incremental Budget.

Would you ever give your children the whole 1-year pocket

money, regardless their future behaviour? Decrease the

budget allocated to new projects, increase the number

of budget rounds and make the governance for budget

requests lighter. This will lower the risk of losing a big

investment and management has more chances to re-

evaluate (e.g. kill a project if necessary).

what you can do “Let’s go on, we already spent 100k in this project”.

“ROI is my best KPI for investments”.

Huston says:

5/

Everyone knows that

uncertain projects need

more time to reach their

payback time. Most projects

(90%) don’t even reach

break-even. If they do,

though, chances are that the

ROI will be multiples of your

‘low hanging fruits’.

“ROI is my best KPI for investments”.

Proj 1 Proj 2 Proj 3 Proj 4 Proj 5Proj 1 Proj 2 Proj 3 Proj 4 Proj 5

ROI in regular departments ROI in Innovation departments

Innovation has its own accounting system.

Have a look at innovation accounting and see how to

measure innovation practices on different levels.

what you can do “ROI is my best KPI for investments”.

Time-To-Market is the new ROI.

Comparing projects based on projected on ROI

doesn’t make sense once the time to market

differs too much as ROI of long-term projects

is far more uncertain. Check out this insightful

article .

what you can do “ROI is my best KPI for investments”.

“We don’t assign a budget without clear deliverables”.

Huston says:

6/

This investment strategy has been great for heavy

IT implementations, but it doesn’t work for projects

without a clear outcome yet. The push for control

and short term return (often driven by shareholders)

makes it impossible for uncertain projects to change

direction when needed. This increases the chance of

failure and premature project murder.

“We don’t assign a budget without clear deliverables”.

The progressive marketing department

of Cartamundi, a European board game

manufacturer, gives 10% of their marketing

budget to Pull The Trigger , a growth hacking

agency started by a former Board of Innovation

employee, to challenge their way of working

towards the same goals. This 10% can be seen

as a rule of thumb for experiment budgets and

time investment. It will decrease costs on the

long term.

best practice

ForestPlastics by Sappi and other

corporate startups that we support

have budget cycles of 3 months to

realign budget with deliverables.

best practice

Bart Remmerie , a former HR manager

of Elia Group, allocated part of his own

budget allowance to an initiative called

the ‘After Hours Guerrilla Club’ . The goal

of the concept was to enable and motivate

intrapreneurs to test new ideas and launch

them from the bottom of the company,

rather than the other way around. A great

way to enforce an innovation culture in the

company.

best practice

“We have a prototype for our new service but we’re scared to spoil our reputation”.

Huston says:

7/

Don’t get us wrong here. It takes

decades to build a good company

reputation and it should be protected!

What we want to tackle is how risk

managers and corporate communication

departments flag any type of

experiment with clients involved. The

main issue is the difference in both

mindset and context understanding of

lean startup type experiments. Both risk

manager and intrapreneur will have to

meet in the middle.

If it’s a Beta, say it out loud!

Framing the context of experiments

and immature services is key. You won’t

disappoint your current customers, and you’ll

make the early adopters amazingly happy.

what you can do “We have a prototype for our new service but we’re scared to spoil our reputation”.

New Android releases are prelaunched in

beta communities (a group of clients that

want to test new products, search for bugs

and give feedback). Beta (or even Alpha)

launch should be all over the place.

best practice

Give the new service a distinct brand. You’ll get two advantages: not only to bring the attention

away from the parent company when experimenting new

services, but also to diversify your target.

what you can do “We have a prototype for our new service but we’re scared to spoil our reputation”.

BNP Paribas launched a new bank (Hello

Bank) targeting only early adopters of

regular banking services to pilot new

products & services.

best practice

Ask for a maximal liability.

Intrapreneurs can use the principle of ‘maximal liability’ when

asking for permission to execute a client experiment. It is the

maximal amount of monetary risk linked to an experiment.

Risk managers aware of this concept can also suggest ways

to decrease maximal liability, rather than saying “NO” to any

experiment with a risk higher than X.

what you can do “We have a prototype for our new service but we’re scared to spoil our reputation”.

“Apple invented the smartphone”.

Huston says:

8/

What we hear in every second innovation

session: “We will educate the market, like

Apple did in 2007 when they launched

the first smartphone”. Well, nice to be

challenged as an innovation facilitator,

but let’s face the facts: in the early

90’s, IBM launched the Simon Personal

Communicator. Next to calling, the device

was able to send and receive faxes and

emails. IBM didn’t succeed, but it sounds

like a smartphone to me .

“Apple invented the smartphone”.

Most successful products launched by big companies are smart copies of what others are doing.

Taking inspiration is not copying.

Don’t see smart copying as ‘stealing’; see it as being

inspired by others. The more you copy what works,

the better your offering will be. If you like this idea,

feel free to download our analogy cards for free and

start copying business concepts like an artist.

what you can do “Apple invented the smartphone”.

“Coming up with innovative solutions is always on top of the job”.

Huston says:

9/

“Coming up with innovative solutions is always on top of the job”.

…and “Innovation is only for new

projects” are quotes that we hear

when we have an innovation

workshop with non-innovation

professionals.

…and “Innovation is only for new

projects” are quotes that we hear

when we have an innovation

workshop with non-innovation

professionals.

“Coming up with innovative solutions is always on top of the job”.

“What new innovation? Can’t you see I’m too busy?!”

Put innovation in your daily routine.

Dear companies, if you really want to be innovative,

you better start experimenting in existing projects.

Start small and create a culture of trying new ways

that question the status quo.

what you can do “Coming up with innovative solutions is always on top of the job”.

ING recently launched “PACE every day” , their

program to support all employees with everyday

initiatives to use PACE principles. PACE is ING’s

uniform language to support innovation and creative

thinking. It’s a mix of lean startup, design thinking, and

agile development principles.

best practice

VRT, a national public-service broadcaster

in Belgium, organises bi-weekly meetups

to tackle new topics in broadly aimed open

masterclasses. Next to that, they created

‘challenge’ cards for anyone to come up with

ideas on user-centered challenges that were

uncovered by the innovation team.

best practice

Did we miss anything? Send your tips to [email protected]

That’s all Folks!

www.boardofinnovation.com