If you're building an innovation function or refurbishing it, here's a foundation to use.

In our work with Innov8rs CoLab, we typically engage with organizations that are building an innovation function for the first time or are refurbishing a unit that's no longer delivering desired results.

We ask the following questions to start:

Question #1: What is, and isn't, innovation to your organization? Give specific examples of both.

The top performing innovation engines know what innovation is, and isn't, and they provide examples from the past. They define innovation along a spectrum from incremental to breakthrough.

Question #2: What metrics and KPI's will be used to assess innovation performance?

There's a cottage industry that's arisen around innovation metrics and KPI's but three matter most: top line revenue growth, net operating income growth, and market share growth. All other metrics ultimately support these three metrics and can be informative, but they are a means to an end.

Question #3: What funding and resources are available to advance the innovation function?

This answer is quite revealing and usually uncovers more than a few uncomfortable truths. If innovation is funded on a quarter by quarter basis then it lacks a long term commitment.

Question #4: What type of talent will be used to lead the innovation function and how will that talent be structured?

There are a plethora of models for structuring teams including dispersed or centralized. At least one person should be fully responsible for delivering innovation results and these metrics should be reflected on their employee scorecard.

Day 27