6 ways to remove organisational barriers to innovation

In many large corporations often the very practices designed to foster innovation can start to hinder it.

Over time processes, committees and forums for managing innovation become a means to end in themselves.

Just getting your idea approved by the stage-gate committee is seen as goal.

You get judged on process progression, rather than being agile and getting a beta version of your idea to market, so you can iterate and improve quickly.

At worst these practices result in watered down ideas which are designed by committee.

Overly rigid steps and endless rounds of powerpoint presentations start to hamper agility, pace and the capacity for a team to pivot when they uncover new insights and ideas.

Here are a few tips we’ve learnt along the way to help you be more agile.

1. Challenge organisational structures and processes that don’t add value

Over time processes can become redundant, but in many instances don’t get challenged.

As an organisation you might master a process, but fail to challenge whether it still adds any real value.

Encourage people to question processes, committees, decision making forums — and so forth — if they don’t promote agile innovation practices.

Ask yourselves

Does this add value?

If we stopped doing this would it make a difference?

Is there a smarter way to do this?

The folks at the coalface of innovation know what hampers positive action. Spot the problem areas and empower your team to come up with a better solution rather than gripe about it!

2. Collaborate, co-create

Ideas created by diverse teams perform better than those conceived in functional silos.

However, many departmental structures encourage silo thinking. This won’t be a deliberate organisational choice, but happens via some sort of invisible ‘functional gravitation pull’. Watch out for this.

To counter this invisible force put in place activities to support deliberate cross functional teamwork and sharing of insights.

Ensure innovation teams are made up from diverse expertise from the outset.

This facilitates ideas that encompass all business needs: insight, brand, supply chain, R&D, regulatory, sales, category.

You ideas will be stronger, and you’ll achieve alignment and cross functional buy-in quickly.

3. Create imperfect prototypes

Routinely we see teams spend far too long refining an idea — in too much detail — before they share it with consumers and business partners for feedback.

Organisations that encourage people to design and share roughly hewn, imperfect prototypes — and cycle through iterations swiftly — perform better.

Speedy and iterative feedback creates stronger ideas.

4. Storytelling.

Role model and talk about the behaviours you want to see.

If you talk about the benefits of agility, but are slow to make decisions or don’t empower teams, people will see the disconnect.

Not only should you role model the desired behaviours, also showcase examples of those behaviours when exhibited by others.

For example, if you have an R&D colleague who is intensely curious about consumer behaviour, attends consumer workshops and spends time in users homes to figure out how best apply new technologies to unmet needs, call it out and reward it as an example of best practice consumer centric thinking.

Storytelling is a powerful force for good — we all engage with real stories — and is something a good leader should do.

5. Put the consumer at the heart of ideas.

When working on an idea you should constantly ask ‘are we doing the right thing for our consumers?’

New products that underperform do so — in the main — because they are based on a weak understanding of consumer needs and superficial insights.

If you reflect on a new product or service that’s caught your attention recently, I bet it has solved a problem for you — and possibly even a problem that you didn’t realise you had! — in a way that is intuitive, novel and makes perfect sense. It will be based on a vivid and rich understanding of your needs.

Too often consumer insights aren’t really powerful insights: they are a sneeze of multiple data points and charts buried in 100 page powerpoint decks; or the converse, are oversimplified into a ‘human truth’ that is generic. Either way it’s difficult to innovate successfully in these circumstances.

Probe for a deeper understanding of consumers needs, motivations and frustrations: bring these to life — as well as the context in which your products play a role in people’s lives.

This engages people in your organisation with a richer and vivid picture of what you need to do to delight, engage and cement the loyalty of your consumers by helping them solve life’s little (or big) problems.

As Johnny Ive said recently in a BBC documentary ‘The role of the designer is to bring order to chaos.’ To order this chaos we create videos, posters, infographics and booklets to make these insights real and engaging. It helps people develop a common purpose around the jobs they need to solve for their consumers.

6. Prune the project list

Put your energies into ideas that have value — to the consumer and to the business.

If the team are spending time chasing ideas that have limited incremental potential, you’ll constantly be playing catch up: your retail customers won’t be keen to support them, your marketing dollars won’t be productively spent, the ROI will be woeful and people will get dispirited.

Challenge the list of projects you are resourcing.

Drop the weak ideas, so you can spend more time on those with potential, to make them stronger to create more impact.

James Jesty is an innovation consultant who works with global brands and blue chip businesses unlocking innovation. If you want help breaking down barriers to innovation get in contact www.shapenewideas.com