Short-term thinking leads to short-term gains, but usually to the detriment of long-term adaptation and category leadership.
Our Reason for Being
Corporate innovation is not a program, a funnel or even a dedicated department.
It is a mindset that must be diffused throughout the organization and owned, supported by every member of that organization. And that mindset cannot be capture or communicated in a program or a company-wide activity because corporations are not designed to innovate.
Depending on your company’s current innovation stage, the Entrepreneurial Transformation Stack provides a simple set of elements that guide your organization for success in accelerating innovation. Let’s discover which stage your organization is at, and design a plan to amplify the effectiveness of innovation starting today.
Stage 1:
Strategize for the Future
Corporations on the entrepreneurial transformation journey need to start with a defined innovation strategy, a clear direction for how it views the market changing in the next 3-5-10 years and how it plans to position itself within that evolving market.
Alongside that strategic direction should be a set of clear focus areas that mirror the three horizon-based portfolio approach to innovation, i.e. this is how we plan to innovate and place our bets in the near to long-term. Focus areas are not innovation plans; they do not specify when or how or with who to innovate. Focus areas are there to guide those plans, a set of rules that reflect what the company believes in about the future.
- Vision for What’s Next
- Innovation Strategy
- Focus Areas
- Innovation Roadmap
Stage 2:
Setup the Foundation
Building a foundation for innovation is about changing how work is done in an organization. This means promoting creativity and the attributes that leads to associational thinking (i.e. risk-taking, questioning, observing, networking, experimenting – The Innovator’s DNA), while recognizing and rewarding failure-inspired learning.
Furthermore, while not everyone in an organization needs to directly be involved in your corporate innovation program, everyone has a role to play. Invite all employees to be “changemakers for innovation”, and train them as such, on everything from innovation strategy to the lean methodology as well as the portfolio dynamics and horizon framework of partnering with startups.
Finally, create and refine internal processes that enable innovation parallel to existing processes. An entrepreneurial organization is one that merges the spontaneous nature of creativity with the efficient structures of a corporation via formalized yet flexible processes and procedures.
- Culture Building Activities
- Ideathons & Hackathons
- Innovation Methodology Training
- Internal Innovation Process Development
Stage 3:
Initiate Programs
Innovation programs can be separated into two categories: internal and external. Internal programs rely on nurturing and encouraging an experimental mindset across your entire workforce to spot opportunities and test solutions; external programs require you to link with the existing startup and innovation ecosystem and build open channels of communication to discover, formulate and scale promising partnerships.
Both types of programs and structures serve as the conduit to creating a broad portfolio of ideas and possibilities, thereby increasing your chances of staying ahead of the curve.
- Corporate Entrepreneurship Program
- Startup Engagement Program
Stage 4:
Invest & Expand Deeper
Once the foundation of entrepreneurial culture and innovation portfolio management has been laid, corporations can begin to push the edge of what’s possible. While most volunteer-based innovation programs deal with the immediate innovation needs, innovation-dedicated resources are required to pursue the mid-to long-term goals of the innovation strategy.
This process involves the rapid generation of internal startup teams, the investment into external startups for long-term integration, or the formation of external startup structures to eventually spin back into the company.
- Agile SWAT Teams
- Corporate Venture Capital Fund
- Spin-In Project Development
- Startup Ecosystem Management
