It’s one thing to realize that innovation is an integral part of the long-term viability of a business. It’s quite another to know exactly what kind of innovative practices will maximize ROI and minimize risk. Having a comprehensive innovation plan in place – detailed in a charter and supported by senior leadership – can help reduce uncertainty and ensure idea management projects tackles the most important objectives. In this article, our friend from Innovation Observer, Eugene Ivanov, explores why implementing an innovation charter should be a priority for any business.
Using corporate innovation tools
A lack of executive leadership is one of the most commonly mentioned reasons for the failure of innovation. This leadership vacuum usually comes in two varieties. The company’s CEO loudly declares “Let’s innovate!” and then forgets about it, leaving the nascent innovation team fight alone against the overwhelming forces of inertia and resistance. Or, the C-floor loads the innovation group with a zillion challenging goals, expecting it to deliver one magic bullet after another, but provides no room for experimentation or failure. Regardless of the road, the destination is the same: innovation initiatives splutter; the sense of excitement subdues; pessimists feel vindicated and cynics argue that corporate innovation is a career suicide.
I think that one approach to deal with this problem is to create a corporate Innovation Charter. No, I don’t consider this approach a panacea; other remedies should be administered too. And, yes, I realize that writing up yet another corporate missive may sound “bureaucratic.” Nevertheless, I see, at the very least, three reasons why a charter could promote employee innovation and engagement.
1. An Innovation Plan Charter Outlines Major Aspects of the Company’s Innovation Strategy
The major objective of your corporate innovation charter is to outline what exactly innovation means for this specific company. It should explain where the company stands today; where the company wants to be in a few years; how the gap will be bridged and what role innovation should play in this process. The clarity about the place innovation occupies within the framework of the general corporate strategy will help select appropriate (and, hopefully, appropriately supported) innovation programs. It will also help identify and support the most efficient innovation tools, including the choice of innovation management software.
Equally important, your Innovation Charter should create a common innovation language. Many problems stem from the fact that people use different vocabulary when speaking about innovation. The consequences might not be as dramatic as the epic failure of the Babylon Tower building project, yet serious enough to erect a communication wall between the innovation team and the rest of the company.
In other words, the Innovation Charter, after loudly declaring “Let’s innovate!”, keeps the message alive and helps transform it into a set of actionable business initiatives.
2. An Innovation Charter Creates the Innovation “Law of the Land”
I’d be the last person to blame a company’s CEO for the lack of attention to innovation. Let’s face it: CEOs are people in charge of everything, and it’s plain unrealistic to expect them pay undivided attention to any particular business process, including, of course, innovation, a continuous process with no evident need for day-to-day executive control.
So, instead of asking CEO for constant intervention, the innovation team should create an Innovation Charter and asks the CEO to explicitly endorse it (ideally, publicly). With this endorsement, the innovation team can claim executive support even when the attention of the executive leaders will inevitably shift to other priorities.
In other words, the Innovation Charter establishes the innovation “law of the land.” Sure, as any other law, it needs re-enforcement, but it helps maintain order even when authority is absent.
3. An Innovation Charter Makes Innovation “Everyone’s Business”
Corporate innovation can only succeed if it’ll expand from the traditional R&D or product development units to departments that are usually not involved in innovation programs (manufacturing, finance, HR, etc.). Unfortunately, very often, the corporate structure is too rigid, too “anti-matrix,” to allow innovation to become “everyone’s business.”
Realistically, not everyone in a company will be willing to assume the extra-load that participation in innovation activities demands. But even those who are, often can’t because of the immense pressure (applied by their managers) of their everyday routine tasks. Here, an Innovation Charter can help too as it provides an explicit mandate to get involved in innovation activities, something that even all-powerful mid-level managers can’t easily dismiss.
In other words, Innovation Charter sends a message to all: “Yes, you can and you should!”
While implementing a charter can be extremely useful for ensuring employee activities align with key innovation goals, it’s just as important to have systems in place that record how efficiently these goals are being reached. After all, you can’t manage what you can’t measure. Here at Qmarkets , we’re committed to making it as easy as possible to gather crucial analytics for the innovation campaigns you launch. Qmarkets software allows users to generate custom reports based on a wide range of criteria, as well as gather metrics for ROI, net savings, the number of upvotes an idea has received, and much more. The full rundown of the new reporting capabilities of the Qmarkets platform is available on our latest product release announcement page.
To find out how Qmarkets can help you develop the corporate innovation plan and process best suited to your business, contact us for a free demo today!
