What Does it Mean to Work in Innovation?

What Does it Mean to Work in Innovation?

Humans are hardwired to seek out predictability. So, it goes without saying, Innovation Consultants are wired a little differently. After almost a decade within a global innovation consultancy, it’s amazing to sit back and reflect on the incredible diversity of innovation challenges I've been exposed to over the years. 

When people think of innovation consulting, they typically jump to the clichés of whiteboards, post-it notes, brainstorming sessions, and labs filled with electronics. While those might be part of the process, they ignore the point that innovation consulting is a true business discipline. The starting point of exploring innovation as a career isn't the process, it's the problems you get access to. From setting up innovation departments to pivoting business models to designing services to prototyping new technologies, formal definitions aside, when your job is to deliver innovation, you learn quickly that it's a term with incredibly broad applications. 

Since most companies have innovation as a corporate value or listed as a line item in their balanced score card, we see an increased expectation that “innovation” is everyone’s responsibility. But what does that actually mean? For some, Innovation is a process. For some, it’s an outcome. Innovation is a challenge. A department. A responsibility. An aspiration and a scapegoat. Until someone goes through a deliberate process of defining what are we trying to achieve, innovation is an incredibly loaded term that often has a paralyzing effect. 

But clarifying what are we trying to achieve is pivotal to action. Whether you’re someone interested in working in innovation consulting, or someone tasked with delivering innovation as part of your role, until you define or the impact of innovation, it’s difficult to move forward. 

So what are people trying to achieve? Here are some of the challenges that I’ve seen in the past.  

C-Suite Innovation Goals

  • We are trying to bring tangibility to the term innovation (Help us develop a formal definition, intent, structure, and/or practice of innovation).
  • We are trying to pivot our core business. (Help us create a culture of innovation through training, development, change management)
  • We are trying to systematically increase the number of innovation programs that yield results (Help us build an innovation department, the objective, model, focus, stage gate system, resourcing)
  • We are trying to manage the risk associated with new ideas (Help us design and manage a portfolio of innovation opportunities and stage gate process) 

SVP Innovation Goals

  • We are trying to get new ideas into the organization. (Help us source new ideas through submission processes, open innovation challenges, internal programs, academic partnerships)
  • We are trying to identify new whitespaces / categories / business models we can explore. (Help us execute the design process, define our organizational strategy, conduct customer research or market scanning)
  • We want to decide what to pursue. (Help us design a process or prioritization framework)
  • Help us maximize the value we can extract from an invention. (Help us evaluate product market fit, extend innovation opportunities, define value propositions, or explore product strategy)
  • Help us prepare for a specific trend or shift? (Help us develop a new capability, identify new opportunities, align our offerings to market needs)

VP & Director Innovation Goals

  • We are trying to pursue an opportunity we see. (Help us design a product, service, or customer experience)
  • We are trying to evaluate the viability of a specific concept? (research, prototyping, engineering, design services)

The point here is that every one of these objectives has been framed as a variation of think / act / deliver Innovation. Its only once we unravel the true problem we are trying to solve through a clear understanding of the outcome we’re looking to achieve that we can move forward. Consulting 101. 

So why not just go to a traditional consulting firm? Implied in the challenge is achieving the goal in a different, more human way. Innovation consultants are wired differently, and we believe we need to both impact a challenge and impact how the people we work with think / act / deliver. 

So what types of problems do innovation consultants work on? We work on problems that are important to the business, and we do it in a way that both impacts growth and culture. 

So what types of innovation challenges have you worked on?

Kimberlite Rusyn

HCP Engagement Lead @ KeyOps | Change Management, Digital Marketing

7y

Working in innovation definitely means a very wide breadth of projects that come in many shapes and sizes (mostly large), and we can't forget scope creep. I love that you've defined what innovation may mean to different roles because as an organization you can only define it so much since it means something different to each individual. It has taken tripping a few times to realize the differences. We've now created unofficial definitions of innovation for each stakeholder to understand what they're looking to achieve, and what would make them happy as some look for visual and tangible changes/solutions. Thanks for sharing!

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Naz Mottaghian

Product@HubSpot & Full-time Tinkerer

7y

Nicely written! Innovation consulting can only stand on a firm foundation of technical skills and hands-on experience. I suggest to expand your article to include variation in skill-sets required to be successful.

Alexandre Enkerli

Learning Professional & Ethnographer / Professionnel de l’apprentissage et ethnographe

7y

Sounds like there are diverse spheres, in the innovation world. Some of the objectives you describe could probably be lumped together in a single position (say, Chief Culture Officer). But the benefit of consulting comes in part from the negotiated boundary between insider and outsider status. Part of the beauty of consulting is that we can build on what's already there while making the organization a bit more porous. Been mostly working in smaller, less hierarchical organizations, especially community organizations. Currently working for a university-based startup incubator. The types of challenges do tend to be different from your list, especially in how they're divided up. Of course, they're rarely spelled out as clearly as you've put them. When they are, it might be less a matter of the “org chart” and more a matter of core aspects of the organization’s culture, cropping up in all sorts of places. In small, more horizontal structures, the challenges are likely to be “existential”. When the threat to the organization’s existence is constantly felt by everyone involved, innovation isn't just “nice to have”. These are cases where necessity is indeed the mother of invention and innovation itself is perceived as a strong requirement. Working as a consultant in these contexts does have to do with thinking, acting, and delivering. But responsibilities are split in a very different way. Conversely, there are situations (such as the public sector in Quebec) where innovation itself is perceived as a threat and there's no real ownership of the challenges you list. Then, there are cases like the federal public service in Canada, where “innovation” is shifting from a buzzword to a rallying cry. Consultants have been involved in the process for a while but, at least at this point in time, there's a strong desire to innovate from the inside. This internal drive precedes most attempts to bring outsiders into the mix, through partnerships, internships, and maybe free agents. So it sounds to me like the innovation challenges do vary. Some of the words used in your descriptions do resonate with statements made by people in these other spheres of action. We're probably clear on what “innovation” means in most of these contexts, despite the hype and confusion. But organizational structure may have a significant impact on what people perceive as challenges.

Sue Hagen, MBA, PMP, CSM

Transformation leader - bringing strategy to life

7y

Love the clarity of this post, and your use of personas to help articulate what innovation actually means, Patrick Glinski. Write on!

Len Nanjad

Business Growth Guide

7y

Fantastic article! I especially like how you clarified innovation objectives by position - CEO, SVP, VO/Director. These goals correspond directly with levels of complexity of work accountability and how we design innovation into an organization to achieve its strategy. It's not just about labs, smart boards, foozball tables, SCRUM teams and coaches, or even skunkworks projects. Every layer of management has a very specific form of innovation they can go after. It is about design of the human system.

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