Aligning for innovation

✍ Scribed by James P. Andrew; Harold L. Sirkin

• Book ID: 102392242
• Publisher: Wiley (John Wiley & Sons)
• Year: 2008
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 153 KB
• Volume: 27
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1932-2054
• DOI: 10.1002/joe.20230

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

Companies that maximize the payback from their innovations have aligned their organizations around the innovation process, an endeavor that is less about structure and more about people, management processes, activities, and the internal environment. The authors describe the six alignment practices of innovative companies: designate (1) a single person with operational responsibility for driving or facilitating innovation and (2) small groups/units that carry new ideas through to commercialization; (3) make innovation part of everyone's job and vocabulary; (4) create the prerequisites for innovation—time, space, deep domain knowledge, stimulation, a challenging environment, and motivation; (5) be open to ideas from the outside; and (6) track meaningful measures of innovation inputs, performance, cash paybacks, and indirect benefits. © 2006 Boston Consulting Group.