It was the culmination of a great, year-long experience. Teams from all over the world from inside a large technology company had submitted winning initiatives to create great customer experiences, address grand challenges, and take our technology to the next level. For a year, we’d had hackathons, lean startup sprints, design thinking workshops, and sponsored open innovation initiatives, leading up to the announcement of finalists in the innovation competition. It should have been a time to celebrate, but my sponsor looked troubled.
What’s wrong? I asked.
I’m concerned. He said. There’s a stage that’s coming next that I dread. With all of the effort, creativity, technical expertise, and investment we’ve put toward driving innovation initiatives over the past year, we’re creating an unintended consequence.
Orphaned projects—are projects that will die on the vine because there isn’t sufficient commitment or support to bring them to the next stages of growth.
Eliminate Orphaned Projects
That was 5 years ago. Since then, I’ve been on a mission to change that scenario and Eliminate Orphaned Projects. I’ve analyzed the forces that most often lead to die-on-the-vine innovation. I’ve been surprised that the initiatives that do best have not been the ones with the sexiest ideas. What matters most is having leadership focus differently on innovation.
We need leaders to have conversations about operationalizing initiatives much earlier in the process. As we develop pilots that focus on the products, business models, and customers, we also need to imagine and engineer ecosystems that can bring an extended network of support. Most importantly, we need to invite diversity of expertise—both from inside our 4 walls as well as cross-industry experts.
Support for an experiment is not the same as support for a new line of business.
We need honest conversations about the commitment of personnel and resources to not only support pilot stage innovation but to adopt the most important ventures and drive toward scale.
I believe that the Future of Innovation Leadership depends on all of us working together to make certain that the right ideas receive enough support to thrive.
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ToolBox
THE SEVEN DEADLY INNOVATION OBSTACLES
1️⃣ Fear + Risk. The underlying sense is that anything new is riskier than the status quo.
2️⃣ Lip service. Offering enthusiasm without resources.
3️⃣ Beyond Startup. A mindset that innovation will never grow to full maturity.
4️⃣ Ecosystem impact. Viewing an initiative in a vacuum.
5️⃣ Culture. Inconsistent organizational rituals.
6️⃣ Room A, B, C. A stalemate among priorities A (operations) B (innovation) and (future imperatives).
7️⃣ Lack of clarity. Putting off the tough conversations about the critical path to growth.
Here are the four steps that will help you guard against Lip Service Innovation:
Rules of Thumb to Avoid Orphaned Projects
🔷 Insist on early + explicit conversations with the leaders and operational teams who will run an initiative past startup stage.
🔷 Proactively design and engineer the ecosystem of customers, suppliers, partners, collaborators, vendors, and competitors.
🔷 Don’t get swept up by the allure of the new. Fanfare and awards can ruin morale unless there’s support beyond lip service.
🔷 Calculate and articulate the risk of NOT embarking on the new direction.
As one of my clients says about making innovation real, “Project Next has to become Project NOW complete with clarity, urgency, embedded metrics, accountability + commitment.
