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CIOs: Don't Constrain Innovation |
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Include Every Source In Your Search For Innovation
Don't just place your bets on your own R&D team—or with any other single entity, no matter how good they are. Instead, seek innovations from:
- All employees—anyone can provide and improve innovative ideas. Make your innovation process known across the firm, including the mechanism for submitting ideas and viewing the portfolio. And publicly recognize those whose ideas impact business performance, encouraging others to participate. The IT organization at a large oil-and-gas firm provides a cash reward for those ideas that produce results, recognizing the successful individuals at departmental meetings.
- Customers, suppliers, and partners—your firm doesn't do business alone. Firms increasingly compete as part of a value-creation network—like Procter and Gamble (P&G) working with Wal-Mart to improve the efficient flow of goods onto Wal-Mart's floor.(see endnote 3) As a result, innovative ideas can come from any player along the value chain. A PC storage manufacturer improving its trouble ticketing process got the entire value chain to integrate with a multifirm system. As a result, when customers experienced a storage failure, trouble tickets were opened with every impacted player—like the reseller, the storage manufacturer, and its component suppliers. As a result, work occurred in parallel on multiple fronts— including remedial work for the customer, determining the cause of the failure, and workarounds for other customers who might experience similar failures.
But it's not enough to recognize innovation opportunities. They have to be handled differently in order to optimize their success.
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Next: The Key To Special Handling
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