The 16 Elements of Pollenizer’s Innovation System
We thought a new methodology was all that was needed. We were wrong.
We thought a new methodology was all that was needed. We were wrong.
At Pollenizer in 2010, big companies began to ask us how we work. We were turning ideas into businesses faster than an enterprise could write a business case and allocate resources.
So, we began to share what we do. We shared lean startup methods, user-centred design and a growing library of new tools we we created. You can find some of the these at startupscience.com.
It worked OK. But just OK. The teams we trained were still quite different to our own. They did not work in the same way.
We realised that there is so much more to what we did than the methodology and it could not be ignored.
Over time we collected the things we did differently and found there were three clusters of hard things that needed to be measured explicitly adjusted.
We’d collect these on an ‘Innovation Capability Wheel’ and measure throughout the engagement. In a discussion with the team, we would scribble on a wheel to get a feel for where we were.
Here is the template if you want to try it yourself.
It isn’t a precise science. The goal isn’t to get a 3.5 over a 2. It is simply to know what elements to pay attention to and know that we are generally getting better at each of them.
Here’s each one of the 16 elements and the questions we ask.
Ideation is for everyone in a company. Not just an innovation team. The best ideas come from unexpected places.
Early stage ideas need different metrics. Concentrating on growth and revenue too early kills ventures.
“Our factory is under utilised” or “We need to sell more widgets” are problems which lead to incremental new businesses and rarely to a step change.
This is an interesting one. Modern companies like Amazon, Alphabet and Facebook allow their teams to come up with ideas that are ‘off strategy’ but potentially powerful. e.g. an online retailer getting into cloud computing.
This is the single element that many companies change alone and hope that innovation will come.
This one matters. Is it actually working? Has the company been doing it for a sustained period? Enough time for impact?
Companies that habitually and ‘promiscuously’ share insights have an unbelievable innovation output.
This one is where I see the most immediate transformation. When teams realise that they have the permission and the skills to quickly prototype what they are thinking about, things go faster very quickly. No agency, no dev team required. And once other people can see what you mean, they are more likely to back you.
Most company contexts still punish failure. It is in the KPIs, in the reporting, in the shareholder relationships and how boards govern them. It is in the politics of power. See Google’s research into this.
If you are a telco looking for talent, are ‘non-telco’ people even looking at you? Diversity leads to great breakthroughs. Always.
This is not a physical space, this is a construct around the early stage work that allows risk to be taken. When customers interact with any product within it, they know it may not be around for ever, know it will change and may not be perfect. It usually has its own brand, its own legal terms, its own processes.
If teams are incentivised for growth, they will fail at turning new ideas into businesses because it takes longer than a KPI cycle to get to growth. How can you incentivise teams to take more risk?
Do you need to keep the main business away from the incubator? Does the space encourage open sharing?
Are you thinking deliberately about how you fund new ideas? Often big companies fund with opex or capex. If it is capex then there needs to be an asset on the other side. This causes teams to avoid change as they learn from customers and generally to avoid risk. If it is funded out of opex, it is generally cash constrained as companies avoid too much opex spend.
If the leaders are not deeply involved — all of this will fail.
Finally, does the business have a portfolio of projects across all stages of a lifecycle? Is there evidence that the next wave is emerging as the current wave is declining? Is the business managing projects along the lifecycle and treating the stages discreetly?
Lessons Learned
It takes more than tools and methodology to create an innovation system
There is a lot to change. It needs to be done deliberately.
It will cause discomfort because the changes are profound