7 Quick Ways to Kickstart Innovation And break through Stagnation:

From the BMW Startup Garage to X (formerly GoogleX), from Adobe Kickbox to 3M Ventures, what is it about innovative companies dedicating resources to creating the future?  And for any of us not fortunate enough to have formal innovation initiatives, how do we avoid being overlooked and out innovated?  We have seen Nvidia, Netflix, OpenAI, Marqeta, Substack, and countless other disruptors flip entire verticals on their heads.  In today's economy, innovative companies are thriving and stagnant companies are struggling to survive (or they have already shuttered).

Rather than provide paragraphs of deep insights for consideration, this post is intended to provide quick shots of Let's start by better understanding the problem.  

1. Your organization may not need a formal innovation program, but innovative companies have formal programs.  Is there a step you can take that would move you closer to a formalized solution?

2. Sometimes innovation comes from outside sales--not the company’s sales team, but people trying to sell into the company!  They bring new ideas and new customer insights to corporate leaders.

3. Traditionally, innovation is the responsibility of R&D, product, or a specific team.  Instead, let's rethink the importance of culture. It’s like trying to give life to a plant without sunlight: you can plant the seed and water it and get a weak little sprout, but it won’t last long or bear fruit without a favorable environment.

4. The best ideas don’t always come from executives or formalized programs.  What is one thing you can do to diversify your perspective and engage other roles and titles?

5. Marketing and sales are closer to the end users than most other areas in the organization, except for customer service, so why not bring customer service along on the innovation journey?

6. Nearly all innovation models including running lean, the investment readiness model, the lean product lifecycle, and more can be broken into three steps: creating ideas, testing ideas, and scaling ideas. None of these steps are exclusive to any department or job description.

7. Innovation doesn’t have to be huge: it can be small and not that revolutionary.  But if we leave innovating to someone else in our category we might become the Saturn to someone else’s Tesla, and none of us want that to happen!

While innovation is encouraged from the top down, it really thrives from the bottom up in most cases.  It’s fine if marketing champions innovation, but we shouldn't rely on marketing and the executives alone.  We should take steps toward creating an environment of innovation at all levels.  Sometimes opening the door to some outside salespeople to let them pitch your teams on new, innovative ideas can result in new initiatives internally--whether or not there is a sale.  At the end of the day, innovation is positive change, so let’s seek to change more and win more!