Five ways to make sure your idea actually happens
If you work in a digital or innovation function in a large corporate, you may well be familiar with expressions like 'trying to nail jelly to the wall', or a personal favourite of mine, coined by a client service chap during a five-day technical scoping trip to New Jersey, 'this is like flicking dog shit up a long hill with a lollipop stick'.
These phrases come to mind when you're in a situation where you are trying to get a project off the ground, a project which may well be the future engine of growth for said corporate, and the teams you’re having to interface with behave like you’re trying to sell crack to their children.
In truth the dynamic is created because what you're trying to do is implement a disruptive change in an organisation which is optimised for efficient execution of the status quo. You're trying to push the round peg through the square hole and a ton of people are making it their job to protect the square hole from the alien affront.
However, there are a few tactics you can deploy to increase your chances of getting the project to live beyond the strategy meeting.
1. Make something tangible
Get out of PowerPoint and into prototypes. Something magical happens when you make stuff. People gather round, play with it, make constructive comments like “hey that’s great, will it be able to do X” and are able to objectively critique the same artefact. You can see how people interact with it.
It also creates belief that it's possible. You probably knew all along it would be possible, somehow, but others may not. With a prototype everyone can visualise what you’re trying to create. Prototypes can be apps or websites, or 3D printed, or even made of wood and card. It’s about making it real – don’t sweat the tech, just make it happen.
You can use them for proving the concept is possible, but also as a sell-in tool. Everyone from the CEO to procurement love a prototype.
2. Get a senior sponsor
Air cover in a large organisation is everything. When you come up against the inevitable challenges along the way, you need a senior bod, ideally C-suite level, to help you through the impasse. They open the right doors and make intros to other allies in the organisation. Aligning personal motivations to your cause will help you build advocates. Is there a way this initiative can get someone promoted?
3. Illustrate your idea in commercial terms
Build the business case. Don't be a labs style cost centre. Of course leadership will pay lip-service to the innovation imperative, however, be under no illusion in the case of commercial: entities, especially listed ones, are there to make money. When times are hard your ambitious innovation project will be the first thing to be cut. So it’s important to show a rough business model, create a break-even graph showing when you’ll see returns, reach break-even and then what optimistic and pessimistic performance might be. Show the line going all the way up to £m in year three. Get people excited. They won’t hold you to it but it will give some quantification of the potential returns.
4. Make the perceived cost of not acting higher than the actual cost of experimentation
History is littered with examples of non-action leading to demise. Executives hiding from the truth that their market is being disrupted and they are on the way out. Kodak ignored digital photography, Blockbuster ignored online streaming. Build your story in such a way that the cost of non-action is crystal clear. Then illustrate how the innovation you propose is relatively cheap to pilot, has sensible stage gating so investment can be approved as success is demonstrated.
5. Change the reward structure
This last one is a toughie but a goodie and if you can crack this you'll deliver a culture of long term sustainable innovation for your organisation. The generations behind you will thank you for a long time to come.
If you have a discretionary or variable bonus element in the company pay then in general, an individual or team is rewarded for commercial success – either explicitly in the form of sales volume targets or cost reductions. Or indirectly in the form of hitting softer but still commercial targets such as raising brand salience. Strategy will naturally focus on repeatable proven success models – entering new markets, developing new products in the same product line etc. All incremental improvements. However, if we’re looking for breakthrough success, and step change innovation, we need to alter the models of reward.
For example, creating rewards for the number of experiments/pilots executed, regardless of success or failure, would dramatically alter the culture and language around business performance.
Enthusiasm, quick wits and a good heart will get you quite far. Competence, strategic thinking and creativity will get you a bit further. However, the projects that reach phase two and their next round of funding tend to have someone with strong management capabilities, a commercial head and deft political skills playing a lead role. Hopefully the above pointers give some food for thought and will help you ensure your next initiative lives and breathes for the world to see.
David Caygill is managing director at The iris Nursery, the innovations and ventures division of iris Worldwide, and a member of the IPA's Brand Tech Group which provides an industry view on the impact technology is having on brands, consumers and agencies.