How to set your business up for success? Assemble a crack innovation team

So, you’re embarking on an innovation journey or kicking off an innovation project. How do you best set yourself and your innovation team up for success on a journey that will be unpredictable, complex, and ambiguous at times, and iterative, not linear, in nature?

Innovation is a team sport 

I liken innovation to team orienteering rather than a relay race. Not only is the orienteering trail more unpredictable than an athletics track, but it also requires the team to work together side by side to navigate their way around the course, unlike handing over a baton to the next runner in a relay. 

Too often in organisations we work in our siloed departments, doing handovers from one team to the next. At each handover we risk losing the integrity of the original insights and ideas, as each team, intentionally or unintentionally, adds their own spin or flavour to the solution.

Empowered cross-functional teams are more successful

Just like a sports team, you’re going to need an experienced multidisciplinary team with a variety and depth of skills to complete the wide range of tasks required to discover, develop and deliver an innovation. Having a ‘true cross-functional team’ is the 5th most important critical success factor of innovation. Source: Winning at New Products by Robert G. Cooper.

You also want diversity to ensure expansive thinking, insights and ideas, as well as connection to different networks, both internally and externally. Having a multidisciplinary team will help with this, but you also need diversity of backgrounds, cultures, gender, age, mindset and so on.

Early and continuous involvement from key functions

A true cross-functional team engages the core functions early and throughout the project journey. Having functions like design or engineering just come in for ‘their stage’ is a very outdated approach to innovation. 

Design, R&D, engineering and so on need to be involved early for their buy-in, and diversity of thinking, to share their expertise on what is possible, and jointly make sure the innovation is a success.

Team makeup

Ideally, you’ll have a core team of four to eight people. The bigger your team gets the harder it’s going to be to schedule meetings, especially if the project is in addition to people’s day job. 

According to the ex-Head of Innovation at Method, an eco-friendly cleaning product company, Joshua Handy, one of the biggest killers of innovation is ‘having to schedule a meeting and create a PowerPoint presentation’. 

The makeup of this team will vary by industry, but will likely include some of these roles:

• innovation lead
• project manager (highly recommended)
• research
• research and development/technology
• design 
• marketing
• sales
• packaging
• supply chain
• finance.

When I was an innovation lead, I always found I worked closely with the researcher and designer. We had a strong connection and ‘got each other’. I also needed to work closely with the research and development specialist (technology/engineering specialist in some industries), but at times I found this relationship a lot trickier. We often didn’t have the same affinity or connection that I had with research and design, and we were often situated in different locations. This meant that I had to work harder on that relationship, and creating buy-in and ownership was critical to success. Those four people I find are the core of any innovation team with extras as appropriate to the project.

Match the level of experience to the level of innovation difficulty

Too often inexperienced innovation or product managers are thrown into the deep end to lead challenging and new-to-market innovation projects. This happened to me on my first innovation project, and it was a struggle. A better way is to put your experienced leaders and project managers on the more difficult and disruptive projects and develop less experienced team members and project managers on core and incremental projects.

A bench of subject matter experts and other specialists

In addition to the core team, you’ll have a ‘bench’ of subject matter experts and suppliers that you’ll need to draw on from time to time, for example legal, customer recruitment agencies, communications agencies, visualisers and facilitators. 

Dedicated project manager

Often organisations make the innovation lead also the project manager. However, these people often aren’t your best project managers. Innovation and project management are two very different skill sets. The very thing that makes an innovation leader such a great innovator is often the opposite of what is required to be a great project manager and vice versa. It is a rare beast that can do both.

Having a dedicated specialist project manager means everyone can focus on their roles and leave the project management to the project manager.

Role of the facilitator

The facilitator will be an expert in customer-centric innovation and guide you through the key workshops and possibly even facilitate the entire front end of the innovation journey. The facilitator must stay neutral about decisions, to encourage everyone’s input. For this reason, the innovation lead is not always the best choice as the facilitator, even though they’re often given or take on this role. It is also difficult to be the referee and a player. If you want to participate and contribute to the workshops, then you’re best to outsource the facilitation.

Sponsor

Finally, you’ll also need a project sponsor. Whether the innovation project is full-time or in addition to your day job, you are going to need senior sponsorship to provide project legitimacy, and ground cover, free up the necessary time and resources, make connections and remove barriers.

In conclusion, working in innovation is tough. You’re often operating under time pressure to deliver in an environment of uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. By assembling an empowered and cross-functional crack innovation team you’ll dramatically increase your chances at success. 

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