Replacing creativity in corporate innovation. Are you sure you need more ideas?

Think about the number of brainstorming sessions you’ve participated in that have yielded no results. Reflect on that time where your team came up with a brilliant, business-transforming concept that never made it past a post-it. 

Most people find enjoyment from innovation because it gives them an outlet to channel their creativity. Whether it’s through brainstorming, hands on rapid prototyping, or cross-functional interactions that help people look at their problems in a different light, these creative moments are a break from the routine challenges and responsibilities of managing a business. The process is different. It’s fun. It’s a break from business as usual. There is a lot of work that goes in to curating the right activities and environment to come up with “new” ideas.

But unfortunately this effort is misdirected. 

It pains me to write this after dedicating a considerable amount of time to honing the craft of creative facilitation, but after participating in hundreds of sessions across multiple industries, I can safely say that the traditional methods of facilitating large companies to come up with new ideas just doesn't work.

New insights, same ideas. New organizations, same ideas. It’s a mentorship program. It’s a concierge. It’s an app that gives you points for x, y and z. The corporate creative process is broken, and either we can invest considerable resources trying to fight culture (ask one of my anthropologist colleagues if that’s a good idea), or we can re-allocate our resources to a new approach. 

Companies are unknowingly masquerading imitation as innovation, but by pretending they're something that they are not, they are hurting their ability to drive growth. Apple, possibly the most “original” and “creative” company cited during creative sessions, has a long and deliberate history of copying ideas, and has translated this approach into unprecedented growth. Facebook, Google, and many other valley darlings are in the same boat. While I love the experience of creative sessions, I’m also an advocate of impact and want to see an intentional re-design of innovation processes so that they are better aligned with the brand of innovation that is accepted in large corporate environments. As I've written before, the real effort is being able to navigate your organization to deliver on an idea, not to come up with a new one.

So if we’re committed to killing new idea brainstorming, how can we drive a growth or continuous improvement agenda? Well, here are a few strategies. 

• Use your resources on Idea (Knowledge) Management. You’ve run hundreds of brainstorming sessions in the past. Where are those ideas today? Commit to cataloging them in one consolidated place, and in the event that an idea progresses and was killed, understand the broader context of why it failed. In financial services, for example, I have consistently seen the same fin-tech, product design, and customer experience design ideas recurring over the past 5 years, often coupled with assumptions (not facts) around limitations. Reference yourself rather than recreating the wheel, and commit to truly understanding constraints. 
• Use your resources on signal scanning. Your challenge is not new. Organizations in other industries have already taken the lead on implementing programs and improvements that are similar to what you’re experiencing. Signal scanning involves developing a deliberate discipline to consistently identify how others are innovating in, what you would consider, the early stages of the product or service innovation pipeline. By developing this organizational competency, you are stocking your own early pipeline, identifying smart potential collaborations or investment opportunities, and keeping your eye on future competitive threats. 
• Use your resources on identifying best-practices with measured outcomes. The most effective way to quickly push forward a new solution or approach within your organization is to showcase how several other organizations are already doing the same thing, highlighted by results. In healthcare, as an example, there are no shortage of implemented programs with studied health outcomes impact in a different disease area or patient population. Launching a similar program may be incredibly innovative from your organization’s view, but has already yielded significant results in another area. 
• Use your resources to develop a partnership ecosystem. Most organizations with sophisticated innovation practices have several parallel mechanisms for sourcing new opportunities. These will often include academic partnerships, incubator partnerships, open innovation platform collaborations, and agency partnerships, each of whom may be more in touch with new IP, capabilities, and competitive pressures. Investing resources in strengthening these relationships results in opportunities coming to you.
• Use your resources to develop a systematic bottom-up innovation process. I learned my foundational beliefs around innovation thanks to MBNA’s Masterpiece Program, a systematic, embedded organizational approach to (1) sourcing front-line input, (2) committing every employee to driving both continuous and disruptive innovation, and (3) reinforcing and celebrating a culture of innovation. By crowdsourcing ideas supported by the right infrastructure and executive commitment, there will be no shortage of innovative solutions to specific problems, and identification of problems you did not know existed. 

I want to stress that none of these approaches are easy. However, once established, they are far more likely to produce results (implemented programs and solutions that impact innovation KPIs) than continuing to do things as they have always been done.

But if we’re doing the same thing as our competition, why would people come to us? Well let’s not forget about the other disciplines that make us successful. Your drivers of experience-based differentiation are still a great brand, differentiating insights, a seamless experience, and delivering value from your products and services. These are all characteristics of marketing and operational alignment that, as I’ve stated, are the real hard work of innovation. 

The ideas produced by corporate ideation sessions might be new for the company you’re in, but seldom are they special. Become an expert at the competencies of knowledge management, scanning, partnership, bottom-up innovation, and focus on how to translate change into the core competencies of your business and you’ll be using your resources far more effectively. 

Yes, you can keep hoping for serendipity (and by all means, feel free to do that as well because it’s a fun experience), but let’s think about the results as well. 

Reach out, and let's work together to break the chains.