Go from behind to build consensus for successful open innovation
It might sound weird for people outside of Japan that quite often we have to “go from behind to get consensus from every decision maker in advance to get things through” here in large organizations.
It is just because Japanese tend to be risk-averse and do not want to make decisions on his/her own. Therefore, “let’s make decision together and if something bad happens, no worries, since we are equally responsible no one will be blamed for that!”
That seems to happen for open innovation activities too. I have talked with different startup accelerators about tips for successful collaboration between startups and large corporations. (Startup accelerator programs are usually funded by large companies and provide accepted startups with mentoring, organizational setup, demo day exposure and sometimes access to potential investors ) According to these hearings, the best tip (which might have been obvious for people inside the culture) is to go from behind to gain consensus of boards.
1. Let’s set up regular meetings with board members
First of all, if your company is eager for open innovation and to actually start something new with startups, it would probably cost a decent amount of money and human resources which means this decision-making becomes the boards’ matter.
So when you start working with a certain startup in a startup accelerator program, you would need to set up regular meetings with your boards. And, it would be better to bring the startup you are working with to the meetings.
The best tip here is to use the staff with the accelerator program. It won’t be difficult to imagine that it will be quite hard for someone from a large corporation to arrange meetings with boards ( it is hard at least here in Japan) and of course startups cannot reach out easily to the other side’s boards. So use the third party individuals to arrange regular meetings to share the progress on collaborative projects.
2. Implant ideas into boards in advance
Company executives are relatively conservative (the bigger the company is, the more conservative they are.. ) and are likely to think based on their existing business portfolio. That mindset would have no chance to greenlight new projects with startups. And maybe they are not capable of validating new seed ideas. (That’s why they pay and participate in startup accelerator programs and try to work with startups!)
Startup accelerators should be better at validating new ideas and they usually have connections with outside experts like serial entrepreneurs and venture capitalist. So let’s utilize them to push new ideas gradually.
3. Bring your boards to POC
Startup accelerators usually have an ideation phase for a few months, followed by a Proof of Concept (POC) phase for a few months. POC will be conducted to identify challenges in real operations and see if the needs actually exist in the market; validate the new ideas.
Again, bring your boards to the POC and let them see how it works. If they see your team and startup interact with real consumers or customers, they would feel the project is more realistic. And also, they can see how the project collects data. This would be also very helpful when they make decisions at BoD meetings.
To sum up, we have a “go from behind to get consensus culture” so let’s take advantage of it for open innovations too. Use the third parties outside your company to get your boards familiar with startup culture and ready for investing money into new projects.
(Special thanks Jared Fullwiler for proofreading)
