<aside> 📌 How to Use the Blueprint

We outline the ingredients that you will need to set up an innovation hub grounded in our experiences and learnings, and the questions you need to ask of yourself, your team and your larger organization to set up your team for success.

In this last section, we suggest a set of models that can scale innovation across regions and organizations and some ideas about experiments and activities that we wish we had done but didn’t.

Keep in mind that this is just one option and one point of view out of many possible innovation designs and scenarios. Hopefully, this blueprint can guide you to discover a model and way of working that works best for your needs.

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How To Position Yourself

Use the landscape to guide your positioning. This includes an honest view on things like Innovation Value…

Innovation Value: talking about and measuring the value of your innovation effort is not straight-forward mostly because i) almost by definition having an innovation team will be new to your organization and ii) by definition, experiments and new business initiatives mostly fail to create an immediate financial return. It will be up to you to own the definition of the "value" you are creating for your sponsoring stakeholders and clients.

You have to have a strong hypothesis. Without it, it becomes much harder to measure the result and value.

Going back to the landscape section, we suggest using a metric framework with four pillars:

  1. Insights and Thought Leadership: Answering "What does the future look like?" and delivering research publications and content
  2. Process and Capability Building: Answering "How do you innovate?" and delivering training, coaching, and process development
  3. Research and Development: Answering "How do you engineer the future?" and delivering concepts, prototypes,s and eventually new products and services.
  4. New Partners: Answering **"**Who do you collaborate with?" and delivering business and corporate development services, scouting, and investments.

Lastly, consider how you position your effort in the broader ecosystem. As a corporate innovation team you are likely aligned with the agenda of governments (who promote technology and innovation), non-profit organizations, startups, and venture capital funds. Articulate your value for them and leverage their support.

<aside> 📌 A Note About Innovation Theater: when businesses try to look innovative without having real intent to build new value is looked down upon in innovation communities and startup ecosystems. Activities such as hackathons, open innovation competitions and design thinking workshops are often seen as "theater" as they generate ideas but don't drive implementation.

Ask yourself – do you want to part take in the theater and how much theater is bad for you?

Our point of view is that "innovation theater" done right is beneficial. If engaging people in innovation activities inspires and excites them, then that's a plus in the mindset change category. To that end, the post-its, t-shirts and "innovative" titles can all be useful signals for more permission and intent.

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Enablers and Barriers

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We find these questions helpful when thinking about your enablers and barrier.

Any "Nos" are potential barriers and red flags. Spend time and energy to develop strategies to mitigate their impact.