Management Perspectives

MYTH 1: The people on the innovation team are the right people for the team.

An organisation may approach the composition of an innovation team the same way as other teams by including a mix of functions that can provide different perspectives. However, there are more factors to consider besides having a multifunctional team. Innovating involves uncertainty, a high risk of failure, and solving new challenges; the composition of the innovation team needs to address these.

• Team members should be comfortable with ambiguity and excited about innovation. People with previous experience on innovation teams may have the skills necessary to succeed (for example, flexibility, tolerance with ambiguity, curiosity, and being a team player), which are somewhat different from the skills required to be successful in an established business (for example, reliability, technical knowledge, deep knowledge of the field, repeatable process).
• Consider diversity in the team's composition, including diversity of background and experience and diversity as defined in DEI (race, ethnicity, religion, ability, gender, and sexual orientation).
• Finally, consider the rarely discussed yet essential element of diversity of thinking, a topic I cover in my book Fire Up Innovation: Sparking and Sustaining Innovation Teams and my TEDx talk. We all solve problems differently, and it turns out that we all have preferences for different parts of the innovation process (you can find out more about your preferences if you take the FourSight® assessment). Ideally, you want diversity in how team members solve problems so biases and short cuts are avoided.

MYTH 2: The team should be laser-focused on the outcome.

Innovation teams must be clear and agree on an outcome and criteria for success upfront. Yet, that is not enough. Clarifying a process(es) and tools that allow the team to get to the outcome is also critical. Many processes may be used, such as Design Thinking, Agile, Six Sigma, or Lean Thinking, but the most important is not necessarily which process you use but that each team is familiar with it. Team members may have used different processes before or are new to an innovation process, so clarifying the process and tools that will be used and providing training will move the project along faster, improve collaboration, and avoid some of the anxiety of the unknown.

A team facilitator (internal facilitator or a hired expert) is also critical to moving the team along. The facilitator's role is to focus on the process (preparing the meetings, selecting the tools, managing conflicts, checking on the team member, etc.) so the team can focus on the content. If the facilitator is part of the team, they must prioritise their facilitator role first and be less involved in the content, as focusing simultaneously on the process and the content is challenging.

MYTH 3: The team knows best.

While the team needs to make decisions at each step of the process, they do not know best. Innovation is about creating change for others, and it is essential that the users, defined here as those who will be affected by the change, be part of the process. Ultimately, your innovation has to be purchased or adopted, and the users are the ones who can provide the information as to whether or not your innovation is worthwhile. Sometimes teams get very excited by their ideas and reinforce their convictions by staying in an internal silo. Involving your users throughout the process, from understanding their needs to wanting to share ideas and early prototypes, will ensure your innovation is needed and, ideally, will delight your customers. That approach should include the end users and other users (business partners or other departments in your organisation) that are critical to successfully implementing your innovation. For example, the legal department may tell you that your idea is infringing on an existing patent, or a retailer may not want to carry your product. Being in touch with all your users regularly is critical to making the right decisions.

Myth 4: Innovation teams always succeed.

Innovation is about trying and failing; then trying again. Iteration is the name of the game. When an organisation provides some of its human and financial resources to work on an innovation project, it often assumes that the team will be successful. However, more than 90 per cent of new products fail, so anticipating they will fail may be more beneficial. The team needs to find ways to limit the cost of failure. One way is to create and test prototypes early and cheaply so that when significant issues arise, the investment is limited rather than waiting for a perfect solution that requires more time and funding. Accepting roughness and imperfection, testing to learn (not to evaluate), and iterating during the early stages of innovation integrate failure into the process. Ultimately, the solutions that start emerging have a better chance of succeeding.

Myth 5: Company culture is not critical to the success of the team.

Often, a company will decide to create an innovation team without considering whether the culture of the organisation will support or limit its chance of success. A supportive culture may put in place systems to protect the team early on, for example, an innovation champion who may not be involved in the daily work but will give freedom and some guidance so the team can try new things and fail without negative consequences. Innovation is about risk and uncertainty. If the management team asks for numbers or certainty about the outcome too early, judges the ideas and solutions using similar criteria to the ones used for their established businesses, or rejects all the recommendations rather than providing constructive feedback, the team will likely get frustrated and demotivated. This may destroy the innovation spirit and limit the team’s ability to take risks and enter new territories. That is why start-ups bought by large organisations often end up failing as the new culture with cumbersome rules, steps and guardrails diminishes the ability of the teams to continue innovating. Next time your organisation starts an innovation project, take time to consider how to best set your team up for success.