You Just Don't Understand - The Conflict Between Corporate And Business Unit Innovators

One of the challenges that every large business seems to face is developing an actionable innovation strategy. In smaller companies innovation often happens naturally. Company employees and founders gather in a room to discuss day-to-day operations. The conversation veers off into a brainstorming session; everyone gets excited. Tasks to make the innovative new idea happen are assigned and off everyone goes to implement the latest great idea, often dropping other initiatives along the way. But, that's OK.

In larger organizations with more developed job descriptions; bonus structures tied to quarterly or annual performance and clear lines of communication drawn, taking an innovative idea to fruition can be frustrating and hampered by conflicting priorities.

So, it was interesting when I ran across this article The difference between corporate and business unit innovation at Innovate On Purpose I don't think you can be any clearer than

... the corporate team and business unit teams are a lot like a pushmi-pullyu - both want to innovate, for different reasons and purposes and have different motivations and concerns.

Corporate strategist are often the champions of innovation. They may be innovators at heart or they may just realize that the key to growth goes beyond continual improvement. Stellar growth requires a constant parade of new products and new ideas, as well as, improvements on existing ones.

However, corporate strategists, while great at cheerleading are rarely in a position to implement innovative strategies. Sometimes they are in advisory or ancillary roles and not in a line position with the authority to allocate resources. If they are responsible for a business unit, they may be so far or so long away from actual tactical responsibility that they may not be aware of the enormous resources needed to actually create and launch an innovative product or service. More importantly, they may not have the authority, which often comes directly from the top, to change priority so that time and resources can be given over for innovation.

Bottom up innovation is stymied because clear lines between business units and the corporate power brokers may be limited or, more often, corporate executives feel powerless or do not understand that a priority shift is needed to accomplish the goal of innovation. Worse, those with the power to allocate resources to innovation may they themselves have conflicting priorities. But there are options to break this gridlock.

- a corporate team focused on longer term disruptions that are suggested by the business units that simply don't have the time or bandwidth to focus on what's next, and a corporate team that provides trends and strategy insights to business unit teams to extend their visibility. A corporate team can provide resources and funding to assist the business units with their mid and longer term innovation needs and take on the creation of new markets or "blue oceans".

In my opinion, this outline has possibilities. It does however veer away from the traditional path toward innovation - setting up separate innovation teams. Managers pulled from various business units and assigned to a group tasked with developing innovative new products. While I agree that corporate innovators have their place. Engaging them in the process and more importantly, getting them to back the project and free up resources I think is a better role for them to play.

Real innovation travels up the corporate ladder, not down. Just give a cross functional innovation team the resources they need and the power to make things happen and get out of the way.

Following Mobile Web Trends Toward Profits

Word of the world of opportunity in the mobile web has been around since the early part of this century. Though still in it nascent stage, a few applications are starting to stand out as areas ripe for innovators as detailed in this post Five trends driving the mobile web or as the authors, Matthaus Krzykowski and Matt Marshall put it:

...those areas most ripe for pillaging by start-ups

As one who spends a fair amount of time thinking, reading and writing about innovation, the mobile web is an area I keep an eye on. Why? Because it is so early in the growth stage. It's always interesting to watch as a whole new technology takes over. Will it follow the same trajectory of those that came before or will it morph and branch off in another direction?

The authors of this article discuss the various stages of market adoption in the technology arena:

Incubation

Early Traction

Acceptance

Adoption

Mapping the various companies and technologies involved in the mobile web right now they come to a not too surprising conclusion. An opportunity exists for well organized, well funded startups with well thought out and well executed, innovative products

You'll see the action tends to happen in sectors that are somewhere between their "early adoption" and "adoption" phases

Reading their fairly technical discussion of mobile phone trends, I don"t always agree with their assessment of where various technologies lie in the market adoption process, but it's interesting to note which applications they have identified as at a tipping point.

The Five Trends

1. Mobile Advertising

2. Mobile Social Networks

3. Mobile Internet Interface- Search

4. Mobile Mapping And Navigation - Mobile maps

5. Mobile Mapping And Navigation - Location based

As you can see, the 5 trends include some that have had entrepreneurs and large companies salivating since the introduction of the mobile web, while others are newer entries. Mobile advertising, early to be considered but slow to gain traction, may need innovative new delivery systems or more likely ways to get around the "hassle" factor to really take off. Others, like mobile navigation seem a given, as evidenced by the explosive growth in sales of GPS devices.

So, does this mean that innovators in the mobile field should focus on developing applications in those segments deemed to be hottest and most ripe for exploitation? Well no. Perhaps, and it seems likely given the attention given to the study on which this analysis was based, that venture capitalists and angel investors will be looking for companies operating in those spaces.

However, as we've seen as Web 1.0 had morphed into Web 2.0, the biggest opportunities are often not visible until the technology AND the marketplace matures. Who would have guessed that social media would play such a big role with users of the web 10 years ago?

My advice to innovators is to continue investing time into your ideas, whatever they may be. Ensure that your technology works well and smoothly. Make sure it meets current consumer needs and don't be surprised if user input turns your idea in a whole new direction. Just ask the founders of Ebay ( a market for exchanging Pez dispensers) or Youtube (a place to store videos) or even Yahoo, originally just a directory for friends.