Getting an Innovation Program Started

Sign up for InnoLead’s five-day email program, which we call “Foundations.” Who’s it for? Anyone who has responsibility for “making new stuff happen” in a large organization. It’s most useful if you’re in the early stages of putting together a team and strategy, drawing up blueprints, and working to get the right people involved. (Say, the first one or two years of an effort.) Each email you get includes a question to think about, or a quick exercise you can do.

Looking to understand your CEO better, bring customers into the development process, or work more efficiently with legal and compliance groups? Our “IL Confidential” video series brings you insights from innovators on a variety of topics.

Our most recent videos feature insider advice from Nondini Naqui, an intrapreneur and innovation leader who has worked in insurance and banking.

This presentation collects some of the best advice we’ve heard on getting an initiative going; some of the choices that you’ll face; some of our survey data about average maturity or sophistication of innovation efforts at large companies; guidance on what to measure; powerful CEO quotes on the value of innovation; things that can prove fatal to innovation programs; and examples of companies doing it right. It’s ideal for someone just getting started in an innovation role, making the case for sufficient resources, or working to get a program off the ground.

InnoLead has partnered with XPLANE, the renowned “visual thinking” firm, to create a series of maps and guides that highlight some of the key choices and challenges in corporate innovation, including:

• Understanding the ecosystem inside and outside of your organization
• Measuring progress
• Understanding where you are now on the innovation journey
• Plugging in to the startup ecosystem.

In this series, Moisés Noreña, Moisés Noreña, former Head of Innovation at Whirlpool, Allstate, and Moen, shares his “10 Commandments for Innovation and Growth” at established companies. The goal, he says, is to share “conscious business practices that involve holding values of collaboration, care, and trust that go beyond making money. Conscious business practices applied to innovation, means creating to serve or benefit people I work with, work for, consumers, investors, stakeholders, and the planet.”

In collaboration with several InnoLead members, we’ve developed a new template that we call an innovation roadmap.

The goal was to create a high-level map of the elements of any effective innovation effort, from spelling out the vision to forging partnerships to monitoring results. We also wanted to keep it simple — something that you could start to fill out at the earliest stages of an effort, and modify it or add to it as you progress.

We’ve also created other other templates, spreadsheets, and slide presentations on common barriers to innovation; different types of innovation labs; and how you can make a strong case for innovation.