Idea and Innovation Blog

Ask anyone about their organization and they’ll tell you that they’re different – fair enough and true enough.

This raises an interesting question: if being different is so important that it bears mentioning, why then should any company want to emulate the innovation processes of an other? You can’t have it both ways – it doesn’t work. Using another organization’s innovation process is like having everyone in your group borrow the wrong size boots from another group before setting off on a major hike – with the wrong fit, there’s going to be pain. The kind of lasting pain that might turn everyone in your group off from hiking for a long time; or ever again.

If you rely on someone else’s model, sooner-or-latter the differences will start working against you. The point here is that to do innovation right, you have to figure it out for yourself – the process that will best work for:

• your people
• your culture
• your operations
• your innovation goals
• your budget cycles
• your decision-making mechanisms

A holistic innovation structure should take into account and leverage existing processes while giving you the flexibility to periodically invent/re-invent new paths, activities and participants for workflow and collaboration optimization. Add to this the novelty that ideas coming in are “innovative” and as such often don’t always fit into the neat little boxes that currently drive your existing process channels – so in order for your innovation process to be effective, it can’t treat these new ideas in a “business as usual” manner. The critical first step represents the process innovation that will spawn a growing and purposeful innovation process; one that can deliver the desired outcomes across the operational, financial and cultural matrix.

To get there, you can utilize pieces and practices from others – there are plenty of goodies to tap into. But to emulate someone else’s incarnation of an innovation process would not be doing your effort justice. The act of process innovation is at once educational, liberating, opportunistic and organic. It does require time, attention, care and commitment – plus two essential elements that need to be present for the others to follow: leadership and vision. Because in the end, your process has to fit who you are as an organization and where you want to get to.

Innovation processes are different animals from your typical corporate engagement program – they’re part technology and part people – the sum of which make a whole process. So think of the uniqueness of your positioning in the market, your company’s operations and the people-driven culture that makes you…you. And ask yourself if you should use somebody else’s innovation process or whether it’s worth it to create your own. 

There usually is only one right answer.