Most organizations, including companies, need to hand-pick individuals whose overall skill set complement each other and who can act as a team to drive innovation through the rest of the organization. Individuals drawn from marketing, finance, and the development side, these internal and external innovation drivers need to identify hurdles and create the right incentives to get new products to market launch. What has been found is that it is not the amount of money thrown at an opportunity yet the proper alignment of internal and external resources to effectively direct the product to market. By maintaining good relationships with the rest of the organization, the innovation team can work with the key pressure point people within the organization to overcome inertial hurdles.
By plugging into the long-term strategy of the organization, providing a perception of transparency of working progress of the innovation team, the ability to characterize the insights to consumer needs properly, not getting punished for taking educated risks, and mitigating upside and downside risks are critical to integrating the innovation team’s work in the organization.
The tactics for launching such an innovation team is getting commitment from candidates for the team, buy-in from senior management, creating clear tasks and goals for the team, clarify communication with senior leadership, and establish milestones for pregress towards the ultimate goal(s).