Spending too much time trying to get other people to innovate?

I think we all have been there.
But how do you still ensure that you are getting innovation from your organisation without spending all of those hours?

Here are 11 quick solutions to the most common innovation processes pain-points that will get you results while saving you hundreds of hours.

Try them out... they have been life-changing for my clients.

Is your Innovation Process Causing you More Pain Than Gain?

Four standard complex innovation processes that could be derailing your innovation:

1.    An innovation process so complicated that even the expert consultant doesn’t know how to use it.
2.    Having to submit a 20-page business case for a potential innovation
3.    A selection process that isn’t transparent and causes animosity for those whose ideas are rejected.
4.    Every idea has to go to a selection committee for approval.

Having an innovation portal for people to dump all their ideas and responsibilities while leaving an impossible backlog of ideas to be assessed and actioned.

Having ideas that are novel but don’t relate to any real customer needs, desires, or aversions

Allowing costly changes at the end of the production process rather than encouraging testing and finalising modifications at the beginning of the design process

Four additional critical innovation process problems

1. Not being able to show the CFO innovation metrics and linkable results
2. Making financial remuneration the key motivator rather than encouraging curiosity and creativity
3. Making products the core focus of innovation and omitting process and service
4. Not considering future emerging trends and opportunities

Not having an innovation process means good ideas get lost. Conversely, having a too complex process creates too much ‘paperwork,’ frustration and pushes people away from innovation towards imitation.

Here are eleven quick solutions to flip painful innovation processes into simple successful ones:

1.    Make your innovation process so easy that an eight year old or eighty and eighty year old could navigate it easily and effectively. Making things so easy that people actually want to use it. Reducing the friction and pain points means someone is more likely to use the process day in-day out. 

2.    Create a one page submission form that gets the would be innovator to self-assess their idea and make it easier for someone else to see what their idea is all about and how it will benefit the organisation. 

3.    Having consistent evaluation criteria on your one page idea submission, such as a score for each attribute enables fair and transparent justification of why an idea is accepted or rejected. This eliminates animosity, politics and favouritism.

4.    Committees are the death knell for innovation. Why? Because politics and bias get in the way. Having a concise innovation submission template eliminates the politics and infighting and procrastination that can occur in committees. If you really mist have a committee only have it for projects over a significant financial investment. That being said, all innovation approvals should first be on allowing people to validate that there is a willing market for the idea and that the market want the problem solved.

5.    Rather than having an innovation portal for people to dump all their ideas and responsibilities. Instead create permission and support for your people to first validate the concept of your ideas. It’s critical that there is a need and market for the idea and that the people who come up with the idea are involved in the project.

6.    Share stories with your people that the ideas you are looking for are ones that relate to any real customer needs, desires, or frustrations. Novel ideas, seldom pay the bills.

7.    Rather than making costly changes at the end of the production process, ensure that  testing and finalising modifications occur at the beginning of the design process. This will save you bundles of cash and eliminate the number of headaches.

8.    Believe it or not innovation can be quantitatively measured with specific innovation behaviour metrics and direct relationships to profits. CFO’s love good metrics and they will help your innovation program to boot.

9.    Rather than using financial reward to motivate your team (it’s been proven to not be effective), use curiosity and creativity and recognition as motivators instead.

10.    Innovation can be applied in more areas that just product. You can and should also be focussing on process and service innovation.

11.    Successful organisations are quick to adapt and capitalise on emerging trends and opportunities. Whether that is a socio-cultural, technological, scientific, economic, environmental, or political trend.

Conclusion:

The eight most common innovation process issues are:

1. Complex innovation processes.
2. 20-page business case submissions.
3. A biased selection process.
4. Ideas only approved via a committee.
   
5. Not having innovation metrics.
6. Financial remuneration as the key innovation motivator.
7. Focussing only on product innovation and omitting process and service
   
8. Neglecting future emerging trends and opportunities

The eleven quick solutions to painful innovation processes are:

1.    Make your innovation process so easy that an eight year old or eighty and eighty year old could navigate it easily and effectively. 

2.    Create a one page idea submission form.

3.    Have consistent evaluation criteria on your one page idea submission form.

4.   Having a concise innovation submission template versus a committee. 

5.    Rather than an innovation portal create permission and support for your people to first validate the concept of your ideas.

6.    Share stories with your people that relate to ideas dealing with real customer needs, desires, or frustrations. 

7.    Ensure that  testing and finalising modifications occur at the beginning of the design process. 

8.   Create specific innovation behaviour metrics.

9.    Use curiosity, creativity and recognition as motivators.

10.    Apply innovation on process and service innovation not just product.

11.    Adapt and capitalise on emerging trends and opportunities. 

We share our innovation processes to switched on leaders just like you to fix these issues at TheReinventionClub.com

Find out how our Reinvention Club can help you today.

Cheers,

Nils Vesk

Keynote speaker, Author, Innovation futurist, Innovation strategist