We asked you to tell us your top innovation challenges, then we asked four innovation experts for their solutions. Read on to find out what they said.
Building a useful product is all about understanding what people are struggling with and finding ways to make it better. With that in mind, a few weeks ago, we asked you to tell us what the number one ‘innovation blocker’ was in your organization.
We gave you five options to choose from:
- Struggling to measure and prove the value of innovation to others
- Getting senior management to support new initiatives
- Changing the organizational culture and status quo
- Getting employees to embrace new ideas and ways of working
- Lack of structure throughout the idea generation and development process
Your top innovation blocker? Struggling to measure and prove the value of innovation to others.
These five options were based on the many conversations we had with enterprise innovation experts while we were building our ideation tool. Not content with just wrapping up your answers and sending them back to you, we also got in touch with a crack team of innovation thought leaders for their input on solving these complex but common challenges.
We now have the finished product ready to share with you all. To get your copy, just click on the banner below and fill in the form.
What’s inside the report?
The report is full of useful insights and advice. If you want to get a feel for what’s inside before you download, you can find a few choice snippets below.
Challenge: Proving the value of innovation
Solution: Focus on innovation outcomes
“What companies often miss when looking to drive innovation is the discussion about what outcomes they’re looking for. Once they’re clear on the outcomes, measurement becomes much easier.
"There are many potential positive outcomes from the innovation process, in addition to the new product or service you may be creating. These include improved collaboration, learning, and understanding of the aims of the business, so be clear on what outcomes you want and measure whether those are being achieved.”
Jane Ginnever, Founder, Shift
Challenge: Getting senior management to support innovation
Solution: Show how innovation supports long-term viability
"Senior managers are usually focussed on the current organizational model and how it’s performing. Innovation is about developing new models, so you can end up in a ‘business-as-usual versus innovation’ situation. However, both are possible, and the organizations that do both well often have ‘ambidextrous’ qualities.
"Senior managers will support innovation when it resonates with the sustainability of your organization. Crises, predictions, scenario planning, horizon scanning can all help to nurture a sense of urgency around innovation."
Rob Sheffield, Director, Bluegreen Learning
Challenge: Helping employees embrace innovation
Solution: Involve the entire organization
“Make innovation part of everyone’s job from day one. Constant change and a continuous improvement mindset must be built into the culture of the organization.
"There are some parts of the organization that lend themselves more readily to innovation. Developing innovation skills and capabilities in these areas should be prioritized.
"For instance, marketing, product development, IT and R&D must be continually exposed to
new tech, new methods (such as agile) and encouraged to integrate what they have learned into their roles.”
David Richmond, Innovation Consultant
Challenge: Developing a proven innovation process.
Solution: Use one end-to-end and ‘method proof’ investment process
"If your organization is unstructured, inconsistent, inefficient, or delivery-method-driven when investing in change, that’s a vital focus for innovation.
"The end-to-end process of turning ideas into outcomes is core to the success of every enterprise. It’s an investment process, driven by achieving our goals, at the speed that we need to, and with the least possible risks and resources.
"Development is an essential step in the process, but not its primary purpose. And, as the diversity of delivery methods expands (informal changes, waterfall, agile, scaled agile, continuous, etc.), the need for an outcomes-driven and method-proof process for innovation and investment is becoming increasingly obvious."
Chris Potts, Enterprise Investment Specialist
And that’s just a taster of what’s in the full report. So don’t hang about, grab your copy here.
