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As we discussed in our last post, 7 Steps for Building a Sustainable Innovation Process, innovation is essential to the sustained success of your organization. You can achieve sustainable innovation through a strong Innovation Initiative.
Why is this important? Implementing a sustainable innovation process can help you avoid the vagaries of the traditional “hit-or-miss” innovation. This will help you break away from your competitors, and achieve or grow your market leadership.
In this blog post we will discuss Step 1: Align with your organization’s goals…
Step 1: Align with Your Organization’s Goals
Alignment: Why it is Important
The first step to implementing a Sustainable Innovation Process is to create an Innovation Strategy that aligns with your organization’s goals. This is an important step because although your management team knows that innovation is important, they may not have the time to dedicate to grasping the meaning of an Innovation Initiative. Get the ball rolling by laying out exactly how your Innovation Initiative will help your organization achieve its strategic goals.
Alignment: How?
Innovation requires significant investment of time and funds. Before creating a strategy, understand your organization’s goals. Then you can create an Innovation Strategy that will support this.
An Innovation Strategy is a 5 to 10 page summary of how your innovation will align and compliment your organization’s overall goals. Take up to a month to fully develop your Innovation Strategy.
In your Innovation Strategy you should:
1.Understand Your Organization’s Goals
Meet with executives in your organization to ensure your Innovation Strategy aligns with your organization’s goals.
2.Establish an Innovation Charter
An Innovation Charter should take around a week to create and is a 3-5 page document that defines the purpose, mission, priorities, responsibilities, proposed outcomes, composition, funding, and scope of your Innovation Initiative.
3.Define Innovation Context
The Innovation Context defines the breadth and restraints of your Innovation Initiative. List the capabilities and insights of your innovation. This should be continuously determined throughout the life of your initiative.
4. Establish Realistic Expectations
Remember to keep in constant communication with executives from the beginning of your innovation process to the end, and set realistic expectations.
I hope you found this post helpful. Stay tuned for my next post on “Step 2: Get Executive Sponsorship” to learn practical tips for getting support for your innovation initiative. Until then…
Suggested Next Steps:
- Companies of all sizes (from Fortune-500s to growing startups) use IdeaGlow software to build their own innovation management framework. IdeaGlow is affordably priced & relatively easy to implement. If you’re interested, you can apply for a FREE 30-day trial of IdeaGlow software.
- Get new information we publish on innovation management right in your email inbox, sign up for a FREE email newsletter packed with useful info.
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