This time, rather than posing a question from one of our members, we floated one: “What is the top challenge/issue/opportunity you’re working on this fall?” And we promised anonymity to everyone who answered.
The list isn’t in any particular order, but here are the ten most interesting — and representative — responses we heard. Thanks for contributing!
- “Going faster is big area for improvement. Every one of our partners would tell you they wish we could move faster.”
- “Getting better at canceling things when they’re not working.”
- “Building a community of innovators at our company and figuring out good ways to keep them engaged (virtually, not always in person.)”
- “Putting groups of interesting vendors together to build things that we can’t build internally; not feeling like we need to ‘own’ everything.”
- “Figuring out how to better filter and prioritize the ideas we already have — what deserves more resources and urgency, what doesn’t.”
- “Winning more budget…and expanding the innovation division’s geographic reach.”
- “Making sure that salespeople have the right incentives to help us take our innovative ideas into the market. Commissions are commissions — you have to convince them that this is the next big thing, and they’ll be rewarded.”
- From a hotel industry executive: “Delivering public spaces and experiences that can evolve more quickly and less expensively — dynamic, agile spaces and experiences.”
- “Our team is responsible for looking around corners for the business. That’s really hard, and you can never be perfect at it.”
- “The holy grail of holy grails — trying to establish a common language about innovation even within ONE single organization, and what it actually means.”
(If you’d like to add one that isn’t on the list, you can post a comment below or e-mail us.)
