The Importance of a Year-Round Innovation Program (365d, 24/7)

Try to remember when the last big idea struck you. Often these are weird moments — in the middle of the night, while taking a shower, on the ski slopes, etc.

An important lesson we can learn from this is, that we will never catch all the great ideas when only running an idea campaign once a year. The right moment to start an intrapreneurship project is very individual: stress at work, family situation, a trigger for an idea, etc. That‘s why it is crucial to keep the program open to enable the continuous submission of ideas: 24/7, 365d.

Let’s look at some other reasons to engage in a year-round process:

1. Make use of fresh ideas: New employees are joining on a regular base. They come in with a fresh mind, and new pair of eyes, and do not yet know the status quo. Try to leverage this by engaging with new employees. E.g. tell them about your innovation program on a welcome day and send them an email (or better a calendar invite) 3–4 weeks later.
2. Reorg, reorg, reorg: we all know this — large companies tend to reorganize themselves over and over again. This leads to tension, positive ones (new opportunities or resources) and negative ones (less favorable location or even no more job). We have observed many times that such a change can boost a lot of creativity and has the potential to flip the risk-adversity of employees. Having an innovation program only a click away, helps to leverage these creativity waves.
3. Change in strategies, goals, and decisions: similar to reorgs, the communication of new strategies, company/division goals, or decisions can trigger innovation sparks. This will trigger individual employees at different times to move out of their comfort zone and submit an idea. A status that sometimes can also be triggered by sending employees inspiring content such as the latest trend report or by explicitly inviting employees to submit their ideas to contribute to the communicated company goals/strategies.
4. Culture is king: establishing an open and inclusive culture that allows everyone to submit their idea at any time is what will make innovation a day-to-day reality and normal process in your company. Getting to a point, where every single employee feels responsible for innovation in your organization is the transformational goal of this journey. Look also at my blog about how you can measure the (cultural) impact of the program and do not let anyone fool you: Cultural transformation is not a thing that happens overnight or by a top-down order. It needs time, dedication, and focus to shape and change an existing culture.

How to measure innovation and what we can learn from VC’s

A little remark: having that year-round program in place should in no way limit you to running topic-driven, timed, idea campaigns. Actually, a healthy mix of 2 to the max. 4 thematic campaigns a year, and an open, ongoing program might just be the most powerful.

One more thought regarding the power of establishing a continuous innovation program: Establishing your intrapreneurship program early on as the channel for everyone and every idea will give you the freedom to always also accept crazy ideas. Ideas that might not really match a campaign topic or even scare a campaign sponsor — no problem, just support them as a ‘regular intrapreneurship project’ instead of a ‘campaign project’. Supporting such ideas will also help you achieve the cultural impact the program is aiming for, and — with a bit of luck — to find that 4 in 1'000 idea which is a home run.