I want to add some nuance to the now common bashing of Innovation Labs, claiming that 'Innovation Labs just don’t work'. Indeed, it appears some innovation labs are being closed down, but is that ratio significantly higher than the shutdown of departments or other corporate (sub-) structures? Or is it that the closure of an innovation lab tends to come with higher media coverage and exposure?
Beyond that bias, I’d like to offer potential explanations of why innovation labs are actually failing.
Corporates around the world are investing in innovation hubs or labs, hackathons, silicon valley trips, agile trainings and design thinking workshops to innovate, to become more agile, customer-centred, purpose-driven, profitable, efficient or disruptive. I wanted to know how corporates make sense of the sometimes vague topic of innovation, how they manage innovation initiatives and how they allocate funding. Here’s an attempt to craft clarity through a framework for managing innovation in corporates.
In a previous article, I have outlined the specifics of a framework I’ve developed for defining innovation initiatives. In short, the framework differentiates corporate innovation initiatives by focus area (internal vs external) and innovation creation (problem-focused vs opportunity-driven). The resulting 4 quadrants can be labelled as optimise, improve, create, and reinvent. This follow-up blog post focuses on the right team setup, budgeting strategies and return on investment (roi) for each quadrant.
Corporate innovation has been under serious pressure during covid19. Innovation budgets were frozen, teams were made redundant and innovation hubs came to a halt. Why did this happen, what can we learn from this crisis (for the next), and what does this tell us about the standing and maturity of corporate innovation?
In this article, I present three innovation patterns you can apply to deal with innovation in uncertain times. I lay out pros and cons of each pattern and hope to give practical advice.
