Part 4 of a 5 part series - Making or Breaking Innovation – It’s Always About the Execution

In this issue of our newsletter, we continue with Al Groover's series on Innovation in the Business Environment.  In part four of this five part series, Al discusses how to "Deliver Flawless Execution" when implementing innovation in your organization.   

Previous topics include "Gaining Consensus and Commitment on the Scope of your Innovative Effort," and "Creating a Solid Measurement Strategy."  Next month, Al will conclude the series with, "Relating Output - Test Results to Real Business Objectives.”
 
Delivering Flawless Execution
Process maps outline the sequential steps of an innovation process in various ways, but in reality, all design models come down to the three basic components.  

• A mechanism to generate and assess ideas;
• a design process that will define and test the idea; and
• a strategic means for the integration and leveraging of successful designs into existing or future business infrastructure and processes. 

The critical success factors for any innovation process is that it must be disciplined, flexible and fast.  Simplistic – absolutely, but conceptually exploring and understanding the three major areas of the core innovation process enables leaders to effectively lead and participate in the innovation activities for their companies. 
 
Step One – Gather, Manage, and Evaluate Input 
Ideation is relatively new jargon for most businesses.  But for the most part, it is the term used to define idea management, the front-end of the core innovation process.  Be warned.  Although often under-resourced, it is the critical foundation for innovation success.  Ideation involves generating and evaluating new ideas against the demands and resource constraints for on-going business processes.  Idea input mechanisms range from informal suggestion box available to all associates to dedicated teams tasked with researching and generating solutions for specific, complex business issues.   
 
Successful ideation methodologies efficiently capture and assess a large volume of ideas and objectively assess and identify those ideas worthy of corporate resources.  To increase success rates for ideation activities, you should have a centralized body of cross functional associates to evaluate submitted ideas and establish a set of criteria against which all ideas are evaluated.  Criteria should include evaluation against customer, associate and shareholder impacts and value contributions.  In evaluating opportunity, the model should always consider core business guidelines of costs – hard and soft (internal resource allocation), risk, and potential return on investment.   Allowing teams to actually score ideas against recommended criteria is a best practice in ranking multiple ideas for allocation of corporate resources.
 
Of course, sufficient information may not always be available to make a decision on an idea and until initial design requirements are defined, actual costs may be an unknown.  However, the bottom line is that you should have sufficient information to decide if the idea is worthy of corporate resource allocation and should move forward in testing. 
 
Allocating resources and moving forward with a small number of very high potential ideas is appropriate.  Keep in mind that there may be a wide-range of treatments for a single idea.  Given the challenge of resource constraints, ideas may also be declined from further consideration (killed) or tabled for future consideration.  Keeping a robust and effectively managed pipeline of ideas is critical for any organization that has a healthy innovation process.
 
Step Two – Evaluate Approved Ideas
Once an idea has been approved and advanced in the innovation process, its potential impact on current or future businesses processes must be accessed.  Detailed test designs should clearly identify the objective and goals of the idea and create a means of gathering the necessary information to make a decision.  As pointed out in the “Measure Twice, Cut Once" article – November 2005 Newsletter, clear objectives must be defined in the design phases.  Often concepts may have multiple iterations of testing to gather sufficient information for a “go / no-go” decision. 
 
Idea testing should be conducted as close as possible to the targeted business environment in which it will potentially exist.  Interestingly, many companies are reluctant to test concepts in a live customer-facing environment.  It may surprise you how customers react to the testing of new concepts in which they have the opportunity to give input.  If done correctly, it can be an extremely positive customer experience and has the potential to build brand loyalty with customer.  Remember to always include communications that educate the customer on the test components, the customers’ opportunity or choice to participate, and that in the future the tested component may or may not be a part of the future business processes.  
 
Depending on the level of innovation and the stage of the process, testing can range from gathering a preliminary understanding of customer acceptance to the evaluation of an entire process deployment.  Successful innovation managers follow normal change management processes to build and execute test design evaluations.  The need for speed to market and the evolution of new concepts introduces new complexities for change management. Innovation managers still should leverage the discipline’s structure to make sure execution is flawless. 
 
Step Three – Making a New Idea Business-as-Usual
The final step of innovation execution is to incorporate the new idea into the business-as-usual environment.  Clear participation of possible stakeholders in the earlier processes is a best practice that will greatly reduce the difficulty and obstacles normally faced.  With inclusively defined objectives, previously approved measurement plans, and test goals, the infrastructure will be in place for an easy adaptation to everyday business practices.  Innovation managers transition to consultants to integrate the idea into current or newly deployed business environments.  Consulting should involve the transferring of accurate information and coaching to ensure the original learnings and design components are understood and leveraged for rollout.   Innovation perspectives should be flexible to ensure the partnership is a two-sided venture, enabling long-term owners to contribute to the ultimate deployed design.  Remember that there is always resistance to change and these owners have experience that is invaluable to future long-term success. 
 
Timing for deployment and integration must always be considered against other competing business priorities.  Now is not always the right answer.  With the information gained in testing, rational business decisions should be easier to resolve.  If innovation managers struggle with this decision, more than likely, sufficient information is not available.  One should question what additional innovation activities are or might be warranted.   Often innovation group evaluations can recommend further piloting in a business-as-usual environment if necessary prior to making final decisions on wide-scale rollout.  Deployment does not always have to be an immediate next step.  
 
Final Thoughts:  Embracing Failure – Is It Ever an Appropriate Goal?
What failure is acceptable?  The word alone makes most participants shutter.  Rest assured that the failure should only be acceptable in failing to prove a hypothesis or meet the projected goals for a test.  Failure in execution of the test should NEVER be accepted. 
 
I used to share with my co-workers that our innovation group had a failure metric.  Delivering that news never failed to shock them.  I always followed that statement with the one caveat:  “It’s the hardest metric that our team has and we rarely achieve it.”  To further clarify, I add that a wise CEO who provided that goal for an innovation group, clarified that if we passed every concept that we tested, we would not be pushing the envelope to seek transformational change.  He was looking for innovative solutions that could bring revolutionary change.  As pointed out in an earlier article, there are three levels of innovation work with different associated and appropriate levels of risk and appropriate potential failure goal rates.  If you need revolutionary change within your business, then minimal process improvements will probably not achieve your goal.  The old saying, you can’t continue to do the same things and expect different results generally holds true in most business settings.  
 
I always equate leading innovation management within an organization as being similar to practicing medicine or law.  Although many would like to say those disciplines are pure sciences, the reality is that they often involve as much art as science.  The real truth is that flawless execution requires a blending of art and science.  Innovators must practice and incorporate science in clearly defined objectives, measurements strategies and consensus building throughout the innovation process.   
 
Next month I will conclude this series with an article that will provide additional insight on interpreting test results effectively and my final thoughts on innovation management.
 
Good luck in your practice!