Innovation Support Structure
Unfortunately, it is not enough to put a formal incubation program in place and simply walk away. As we pointed out in Chapter 4 , there needs to be a team to take ownership of keeping the incubation program, and its spirit, on track. There have been tim
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5 Innovation Support Structure An Established Business’ Unfair Advantage “Innovation is not the product of logical thought, although the result is tied to logical structure.” —Albert Einstein Unfortunately, it is not enough to put a formal incubation program in place and simply walk away. As we pointed out in Chapter 4, there needs to be a team to take ownership of keeping the incubation program, and its spirit, on track. There have been times when we have attempted to turn over even small portions of the program to other teams and things started to get off track quickly. It is not simply a matter of skill, although that is important; it is a matter of context and having the right resources and support. People need to truly understand the intent of the program and be properly trained on the elements they will be responsible for. Otherwise, they can become blindly artifact-focused—much like the 70-page template example from Chapter 2.
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Chapter 5 | Innovation Support Structure The same requirements apply to your intrapreneurs. They need to have the proper skills, resources, context, and passion for the problem, to be successful. To do that and take advantage of everything the larger corporation has to offer, your intrapreneurs will need a support system. The individual pieces of this support system will take many forms—some as formal programs, others as informal business relationships—but all critical to the program’s success. As we pointed out in Chapter 2, the odds of success of any given new business are slim and this is even more true of the types of very early stage businesses that we accept into our incubation program—where they start with nothing more than an idea. Your incubations will need every bit of your company’s expertise that they can get in order to gain a leg up and have the best possible chance to succeed. Today, your company already has expertise in a variety of domains. Some of this proficiency is simply in the day-to-day running of an established business. For example, your company’s resources and experience related to legal, finance, and human resources took time to perfect, but a brand-new startup would need to build those capabilities from scratch. Building those competencies takes time and is often very expensive—it can be hard to find the right people and even harder to turn them into the right team. Without this capability in-house, a startup may need to contract or outsource these functions, which can be more expensive and may not have the quality or results they require. That said, while those business functions are very important, unless your business is in innovating in those back-office functions, they do not provide differentiating value to your customers. Over time a startup will eventually build experience and catch up in those areas. Instead, it is the expertise in your company’s specific business domain areas that gives you a sustainable advantage over your external startup c
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