Beyond the buzz: how to build real innovation in large organisations

These days, you’ll hear a lot of large organisations talking about the need to be for innovation. It’s understandable too. Market leaders like Kodak, Blockbuster, and Nokia have all lost their former dominance because they failed to move on from the business models that made them successful in the first place.

Thing is, it’s not always easy for large companies to change tack. When your company has thousands of employees dedicated to doing one thing, shifting their focus is a lot tougher than when you have hundreds, or even dozens, of employees.

That said, there are large companies that do innovation well. While each of these companies has its own approach, there are a few things they all do.

Here are a few of them.

Use small, lean teams

As we’ve already mentioned, it’s not always easy for large companies to try new things. Getting all your staff to pursue a new business avenue is expensive and can be incredibly risky.

Less expensive and risky is allowing a select number of small teams to try out these new business avenues.

Ideally, you should treat these teams like startups rather typical business units. On the one hand, that means limiting their funding (how many startups do you know of that begin life with a typical corporate budget?). On the other, it means allowing them to take big risks and fail hard.

The notion of embracing failure isn’t something that comes naturally to corporate executives, but the use of a few, select teams can make them feel like they’re taking less of a gamble.

Fill them with the right people

The qualities that make someone a good corporate team player don’t always make for a great innovator.

So, when you’re looking to fill your innovation teams, it’s probably wisest to steer clear of your “best” people.

Instead, look around for the outsiders. Identify the people who are always out to bend company rules to get things done.

The same instincts that make them want to play outside the rules also have a way of enabling them to think outside the organisation’s limitations.

Find good leaders

Important as these organisational rebels are, it’s vital that they have good leaders who can rein them in when needs be.

Let the rebels loose and they can cause chaos. Put them under someone who can contain them and they can use their fierce, creative energy to the company’s advantage.

Embrace collaboration and competition

If you the luxury of being able to do so, it’s not always the worst idea to set multiple teams against each other when it comes to building a new product or service line, especially in the early stages. As teams look to outdo each other, they’ll find new ways of doing things that they wouldn’t otherwise have thought of.

Steve Jobs was a big fan of this approach and it resulted in some of the company’s best products.

Once you’ve found a winning approach, however, it’s vital to merge the teams and get them to put their full collective efforts behind the new project.

It’s in this phase that the leaders of your innovation team will be particularly crucial, as they’ll be the ones driving collaboration.

Build-Measure-Learn

A core tenet of the Lean Startup Methodology, the Build-Measure-Learn approach is something that may start within innovation teams, but which can eventually become embedded within the culture of the whole organisation.

This tenet posits that teams need to be able to ideate, quickly build a minimum viable product of that idea, measure its effectiveness in the market, and learn from that experiment.

It’s a learning cycle centered around turning ideas into products, measuring customers’ reactions and behaviorus against built products, and then deciding whether to persevere or pivot the idea.

Given that this cycle can be repeated many times over, it may seem counterintuitive to people who’ve built their careers in traditional corporates, but the rewards can be immense.