The role of the corporate innovator continues to evolve with no single agreed upon and widely adopted job description.

Most roles within the corporate environment have at least a few commonalities. Sales people produce revenue and transactions. Financial professionals manage income statements and balance sheets. Human resources leaders manage people operations.

But innovators operate within the gray areas of growth, transformation, R&D, product and service development, technology and in some cases lead marketing or finance.

But one of the most important roles of the corporate innovator is that of the scout. The scout explores areas to obtain information, to search out the next, to observe and report. At a fundamental level the innovator is the scout for new markets, new business models, new structures and organizations, and ultimately is responsible for scouting the future.

Assuming the role of scout requires a tremendous amount of trust.

The Chief Innovation Officer and corporate innovator is asking to be trusted with the future of an organization. And in most cases, if a CINO role has been created, there are significant resources at risk - typically with a Fortune 500/Global 2000-type organization.

This means billions of future revenue and enterprise value are at play.

The declaration that's being made here is that if an organization is entrusting the Chief Innovation Officer and their team with the future of the organization then skills to read the future and understand where markets are headed is priority one.

The role of the 'innovator as scout' is critical for for future success.