How do you innovate within an established corporation? That is the dilemma of intrapreneurs. A company, regardless of its size, can become complacent, stalling innovation. This often happens after their first success, when all hands turn to process management for optimization.
Hopefully these personal insights will help anyone in need for little strategy to successfully maneuver around the blockades in the system. Please share your own strategy and insights on what works for you.
Recognize that a small step can create giant leaps
As I mentioned before in Small steps… Big leaps, with every small step and by using tipping point leadership principles, we can all create giant leaps. Innovation comes in different shapes and sizes. It is a multidimensional concept where the innovation can happen in varying dimensions and degrees: technology, process, product, service, business model, value-delivery, brand, design, quality, culture, market, customer/segment, … So, start small. Choose an area that you not only care about, but one in which you can also be successful: success breeds success. If things don’t go as well, practice resilience, take your learnings and start again.
Know your influence circle
Perhaps the best discussion of this topic is given by Stephen Covey in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
- God grant me the serenity
- To accept the things I cannot change;
- Courage to change the things I can;
- And wisdom to know the difference.
Working with a mentor can help focus your energy and provide insights on how you can increase your influence circle. You can also take this to the next level by identifying each of the core areas that you are interested in vs. what you can control or influence in each of those areas. Using a simple radar graph, you can quickly identify gaps and develop an action plan.
Increasing your influence circle may not be a simple task, especially if you are dealing with existing perceptions. However, you can:
- Start small: success breeds success.
- Take visible accountability and responsibility on areas you control.
- Demonstrate creative thinking and problem solving.
- Step up and be visibly engaged.
- Recognize that Rome wasn’t built in one day. Practice patience and mindfulness.
- Develop your intuition and stay connected to other’s motivations, goals and objectives. Help them be successful.
- Deliver results and stay ahead of the pack.
Know your boss
Just like innovations, bosses come in every shape and size. In general your success and their success is intermingled (though this is not always the case). Good communication is crucial to understanding their influence circle, their goals and values, concerns and motivations, styles and risk profiles, openness to cooperation… Basically anything that matters when it comes to managing change, as innovation is change!
Perhaps the biggest challenge is when there is a value clash between you and your boss. This is where your instinct and intuition can support you. I once worked for a manager that didn’t believe in inter-organizational cooperation, which didn’t align with my core values. Through utilizing good risk management process along with clear roadmap and understanding of roles and responsibilities, I worked around the issue. However, realize that, even if it turns out to be the biggest success, you will not necessarily get the credit or appreciation. So, don’t ask for it. Don’t expect it, as you are doing it for yourself by being true to yourself.
Hitch a ride with corporate wide strategy
You might have one of those corporate-wide initiatives that every individual in the company could recite in their sleep. These initiatives could certainly be useful as a platform for justifying as well as finding support for your ideas. Unfortunately many of these initiatives just stay at the surface and do not carry weight in the organization. So, take it for what it is, plan your strategy around it while making it work for you.
Test drive your concepts and ideas
Establish a small group of diverse individuals that you can test drive your concepts with that you trust. Ideally a group that can represent diverse views from technology, product, business and customer perspective, and can help you polish and enhance your pitch. For more on this, see my previous article: Meet your idea critics.
Work on your communication and presentation
How well you communicate and present your ideas is your key to success. So, work on it. Through your discussions with others, build your communication deck and keep refining it.
Remember, the success of your execution is dependent on people: your team, your firm as well as the larger ecosystem of suppliers, service providers, labor unions, partners, … Transparency in your communication will help build trust and openness.
Murphy does live with you
Enough said! Risk manage! When they cancel the project, don’t take it personally. Take your learnings and move on. Realize that there are anti-bodies everywhere and they don’t want change.
Start with end in mind
Change is hard and it doesn’t necessarily follow your plan. Stay true to your vision, your ideal future state, and be flexible on the strategy you take. Stay agile and adapt. And remember to build from small steps with demonstrable, concrete results.
Technorati Tags: intrapreneurs, interpreneurship, innovation in established corporations
sharing insights and practical ideas on product strategy and technology management
I find your observations correlate well with my experience as a serial intrapreneur. While this topic could easily form the basis of a few books, I offer the following anecdotal contributions to those looking for either inspiration to keep on with their vision or wisdom to move on to something else.
Today you are a prophet
For several years I served as a technical lead and strategic thinker for a large corporation. I held a vision of the future which I believed was technically inevitable. The evidence from the advancing capabilities of the technology convinced me our business was about to change forever – and we had the chance to lead, follow, or get run over by the resulting transformation. I had my team develop prototypes that showed in a limited way the potential of the new technology, but as low cost demo’s there were many gaps that required either faith or vision to see the implications. We developed presentations and delivered them to countless teams both inside the firm and in our customers’ technology teams – slowly building credibility as people began to see the potential. At the same time, we always faced considerable skepticism. After all we were threatening to kill the goose that laid the golden eggs.
One afternoon I presented these ideas to a team of product managers from one of our business teams and was met with the usual polite disinterest. There was simply not sufficient motivation to consider the potential while the proven was still working. The next day I received an urgent call from a member of the team asking me to come back and give the presentation again and explain how it might work in more detail. Surprised at this response I asked why this unexpected change in interest had occurred. My caller responded, “Yesterday you were a mad man calling out in the wilderness. Today you are a prophet.” It turns out that our CEO had sent a company-wide email which my assessment of the future had effectively anticipated. My caller’s team wanted to capitalize on the advance work we had done to align with the new corporate vision and help set the related strategy.
Your post recommends that the reader-intrapreneur should “hitch a ride with corporate strategy”. Many initiatives will attempt to harness the power of a corporate thrust. The alignments will range from jaded opportunism to foolish enthusiasm with a few visionary ideas buried somewhere in the pack. While there may be little you can do to prompt the CEO’s effective endorsement of your ideas, you can be prepared. Focus on the ideas that fit with industry shifts and future directions. Offer options to address the changes proactively and productively. But keep an eye on the culture impacts on the firm and understand if people and organizations are changing or not.
The Innovator’s Dilemma
So you have this great idea that will transform the way your industry works. How can you understand drive the innovation internally, take it outside, or find another job in a different industry? This is the real innovator’s dilemma. First, read the book by Clayton M. Christensen. Once you understand if the change you foresee is an incremental improvement or a disruptive force, determine if your employer is capable of transforming as required to capitalize on your ideas. Then you are armed with the information to chart your course.
Like any good navigator you must take new readings regularly. In one case where I participated it seemed that the technical innovations were merely improvements but, despite efforts in my own firm to change, the distribution channel was not flexible and the firm was not willing to undermine them. Here again history is filled with the graves of shortsighted protectors of the status quo.
Beware the Siren Song
The economy today is likely to give every innovator a reason to think carefully before abandoning their opportunities as an intrapreneur for the seductive sirens of the startup VC. Many are addicted to OPM: Other People’s Money but real business have real business plans, not just enough powerpoint conjecture to show a big opportunity.
Even before the recent changes in the economy, the entrepreneur-billionaire was always the highly unlikely scenario. You wouldn’t buy a lottery ticket with the last of your lunch money so don’t fall to survivors’ bias when looking at the lure of the startup. The truth is most fail. Understand that unless you get funding from one of a very small group of successful VCs you are quite likely to be forced out of your business and then watch it fail. Don’t jump until you have a real customer tested plan (not a hope) to land.
It is hard to convince your executive management to go out on a limb and support your idea – because it is hard to be successful at a new business. If your new business idea dovetails well with the distribution channels of your firm, stick it out internally. The initial post challenges the reader to “test drive the concepts”. Prove that you have more than a great idea: why and how you will win customers to the new product. Get numbers. Who will pay how much? How do you know? Wishful thinking is a song well rehearsed by the sirens and only the best managers and VCs avoid the traps.
I have added a few basic thoughts from one who has lived in this neighborhood for a while. I hope you find them helpful.
Sam,
Thank you for sharing your wonderful insight, personal stories and learnings with us. I worked with an individual that used to say: be the cork! (cork stays afloat while navigating the uncharted chaotic waters.) For him, it was a reminder to stay flexible and adapt to the latest political changes in the organization to ensure his intrapreneural ideas survived. Though I haven’t learned to be that flexible, I do believe each one of us need to have a motto that helps us be resilient and stay true to ourselves and keep at it day after day. And you are right, this topic could easily turn in to a series of books. Thank you again for sharing.
–B