Your Company Needs a Shared Language of Innovation
There are many factors making up an innovative company. It is for example vital with top management buy-in for innovation to survive in the first place. You won’t get far without a solid innovation strategy either. And without a balanced portfolio of many innovation initiatives running in parallel, you’re asking for negative returns on your innovation investments. After all, most innovations never grow to bear fruits.
Another crucial, and often forgotten factor, is a shared language of innovation within the company. As employees of large companies, we already rely on shared languages in many ways. For example the everyday language we use to communicate with each other in the workplace. Or the shared technical language different departments use to create great value for customers. In the same way, we need a shared language of innovation to be accurate and effective when we innovate together.
Innovating together is the only way to innovate within a large company. That is because great ideas are the spark (no fire guaranteed) of all innovations and these ideas occurs where different insights, personalities and competencies meet. Where differences meet though, there is always room for confusion. Thus, the innovative company should strive to arm as many employees as possible with a language to talk innovation where and when they meet. This will increase the chances of creating value for both customers and the company. Be that through new innovative processes, products or business models.
When a large company embraces innovation as a key strategic enabler, it is already on the right path. But it should also ensure that employees get familiar with key terminology and innovation concepts. To illustrate the importance, try to ask ten different people in a large company to define innovation. In a company without a shared language of innovation, you’ll easily get ten widely different answers. How can innovation enable anything, if the people responsible for innovating all pull in different directions?
Successful innovation follows Build-Measure-Learn-loops, as fronted by the Lean Startup method. The goal is to build least viable products, which can be tested to transform our assumptions into knowledge. The knowledge we gain is then inserted back into the product to go for another iteration in the loop. This is fast, cost effective and customer centered. All the innovation initiatives within a large company are subject to this loop. Even the company innovation strategy itself. How do we learn fast whether our innovation strategy is solid, should be modified or replaced all together? The answer is to forget about making it perfect, and focus on getting accurate and early feedback from employees instead. These are the people that know the nature of our business and the challenges of our customers best. In other words, it is in the interest of the innovative company that employees express their valuable insights on how innovation should be managed. And their valuable insights are far more valuable when they can hang these insights onto the same framework as that of their peers and management. Getting this right, ensures a constructive company wide discussion about innovation from the very beginning.
There are plenty of definitions, best practices and frameworks that can suit your company and your industry. Whether you use something that already exists or make up your own according to the latest research, is up to you. What is important though, is that whatever you go with, is explicitly communicated to the entire organization. Top management and graduates alike. Either by baking it into the innovation strategy, or through intranet articles, training or workshops.
Once equipped with an innovation language, employees will listen and they will speak. After all, you hired them because they want to see the company succeed. When able to communicate innovation both vertically and horizontally, innovation becomes more interactive, collaborative and effective. A great starting point for the innovative company!
