Inside the Accelerator
In order to illustrate the focus of each aspect of our program, and to help you better understand what incubating business teams prioritize in each stage, we share many of our artifacts and Kanbans in this chapter. We want to be clear that these artifacts
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4 Inside the Accelerator How We Drive Innovation by Nurturing Ingenuity “I will not follow where the path may lead, but I will go where there is no path, and I will leave a trail.” —Muriel Strode, Wind-Wafted Wild Flowers (1903)
Proceed with Caution! In order to illustrate the focus of each aspect of our program, and to help you better understand what incubating business teams prioritize in each stage, we share many of our artifacts and Kanbans in this chapter. We want to be clear that these artifacts and Kanbans are meant to serve as guideposts, not as bludgeons. We do not want the cure for innovation stall in established organizations to be worse than the disease. These tools, and the program itself, should be a resource for the incubating business teams and not a tax.
© CA 2019 G. Watt and H. Abrams, Lean Entrepreneurship, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-3942-1_4
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Chapter 4 | Inside the Accelerator
■■Note We want to be clear that these artifacts and Kanbans are meant to serve as guideposts, not as bludgeons.
Process Hypnosis We have seen many cases where incubating teams, both inside and outside our program, have become so mesmerized by tools that their objective became the tools themselves. They lost focus on their innovative idea. Both incubating business teams and leaders, and program teams and leaders, can fall victim to this. When it is the former, business teams can lose focus on their idea, sometimes even unconsciously pivoting away from their original concept. When it is the latter, the program team can create so much tax on the incubating teams that they create an environment that is not much different from the anti-patterns described in Chapter 1, where heavy and unnecessary processes crushed innovative ideas. Program teams can also lose sight of the fact that they, and their program, only exist to help give the businesses the best possible chance to succeed. Whether the program team, the innovators, or others close to an incubation fall victim to this “process hypnosis” or “tool hypnosis,” the result is the same. The impacted business’ velocity is reduced, and their probability of success decreases. Teams must be careful to figure out when and where these tools are valuable, and where and when they are pageantry. Program teams must help them and keep an open mind. We tell teams that we want to always be available, but never in their way, and if we ever become a tax and not a resource they should tell us immediately.
Bad Muscle Memory We realize we are spending a lot of time on this, but it happens a lot and it can have a very negative impact on your program or incubation. In cases where Founders had been working in long-established businesses for a long time, it almost always happens. While preparing for events such as quarterly business reviews in the mature business—where it is often a legitimate requirement— they become so accustomed to having to complete every form, every slide, every box in every checklist, that they cannot break the habit. For example, when we started our program,
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