Disciplined Innovation

Innovation within large corporations requires a delicate balance between creativity and discipline, freedom and accountability. It is not an isolated, abstract endeavor, but rather a strategic pursuit aligned with overall leadership vision and corporate goals.

By embracing disciplined innovation, large corporations strike a balance between fostering creativity and ensuring strategic coherence. This approach enables them to navigate the present while actively shaping the future, cultivating an environment where innovation can thrive and make a lasting impact.

There are several strategies for disciplined innovation and it can be customized for individual company's needs but core of it is having:

Innovation Portfolio
Alignment and Governance
Measuring value of Innovation

Innovation Portfolio

In this world of constant change, our ability to rapidly synthesize signals, recognize patterns, and act decisively empowers us to shape the future and achieve sustainable success.

Innovation portfolio is a set of innovation challenges/opportunities that should be actively pursued :

Developed by harnessing the power of discovery
With potential for high-business Impact, and
Co-created and approved by the leadership team.

Alignment and Governance

Critical for scaling innovation in large organizations is the establishment of effective alignment and governance.

The specifics of alignment and governance implementation are subjective, varying based on factors such as organizational culture, size, and geographical spread.

The key is to strike a balance where alignment and governance do not hinder innovation with excessive bureaucracy. Instead, they should provide necessary support, accountability, and transparency to innovation activities.

The ultimate goal is to create a framework that enables innovation to thrive while maintaining necessary oversight and strategic coherence.

Measuring value of Innovation

Leaders face the challenge of funding innovation without knowing the ROI in advance. Traditional ROI models will not work for measuring Innovation initiatives.

I developed a model to measure value of Innovation based on balance scope card. Obviously no model cannot predict or assure the end result of innovation, however this model can help organizations in three crucial areas.

1) If innovation programs are focused on right challenges/opportunities.

2) If innovation programs are executed right

3) If the organization have systems & culture in place to take advantage of learnings and success coming out of these programs and scaling them.

My blog explains this model in detail.

Are you ready for the journey?

Scaling corporate innovation requires disciplined innovation program. This is the proven model for large organizations to innovate and continue to be relevant to their customers, shareholders and stakeholders.