Many innovation leaders tend to be tactically driven, but their corporate leadership is looking for more strategic planning and analysis. This tension often contributes to high turnover in innovation management roles, based on a misalignment around leadership’s expectations. In this article Anthony Ferrier suggests perspectives and actions that should be considered part of your innovation strategy plan.

1. Starting an Innovation Program? A Strategic Approach to Create Success
Many innovation leaders tend to be tactically driven, but their corporate leadership is looking for more
strategic planning and analysis. This tension often contributes to high turnover in innovation
management roles, based on a misalignment around leadership’s expectations. In this article Anthony
Ferrier suggests perspectives and actions that should be considered part of your innovation strategy
plan.
In the past couple of weeks I have been asked by some significant organizations (one an Asian-based
conglomerate and the other a U.S. Federal Agency) how they should start an innovation effort. Though
on the surface different, they share similarities in terms of their large, complex structures, a need to
create new ideas and a desire to engage their employees.
Too often I come across organizations that think their first step should be to launch a crowdsourced
challenge or campaign. While this can make sense in the context of “testing the waters” and quickly
generating some visible activity, more value can be driven by a well-developed strategic plan.
In my experience, many innovation leaders tend to be tactically driven, but their corporate leadership is
looking for more strategic planning and analysis. This tension often contributes to high turnover in
innovation management roles, based on a misalignment around leadership’s expectations.
What perspectives and actions should be considered as part of an innovation strategy plan?
• Defining success: What is going to be considered great? On the surface it is a simple question,
but by asking this of yourself and your stakeholders, you are generating thoughts and concrete
goals around an often nebulous topic. In addition, you are demonstrating that you are driving
towards a goal that your stakeholders should have a sense of ownership around. If they agree
to the goals, there is more pressure on them to support your drive towards them. Agree the
goal and work to exceed it at every point.
• Leadership support: Considering who would be a great sponsor of your effort and the
approaches to generating broader leadership support are essential to driving success. Effective
leadership support directs resources towards new idea development, gives employees the
permission to innovate and provides a communication platform. Keep in mind, you may not
get your desired sponsor initially, but put the goal out there and work towards finding the
right person over time. Beyond the single sponsor, it is often worth considering how to
engage a broader group of leaders (possibly from specific business units) to guide efforts
going forward. These committees or councils can be stand-alone efforts, or align with existing
groups that are already in place.
• Ecosystem mapping and integrating: Within large organizations it is rare that a single group or
individual controls all innovative activity. As part of this planning process it is important to
understand the various innovation activities and actions within the organization (read more on
this here). More broadly, beyond that they should build processes and approaches to support
continued communication and leverage, with a goal of partnership or integration of efforts.
• Scale of ideas: Understand the size and scope of ideas that you are looking to generate and
assess how you will be able to develop thrm. By first considering the back-end
implementation of ideas, you will make more informed decisions about front-end activities. In
addition, this perspective needs to include not just what individual ideas will look like, but
what makes up an actively managed idea pipeline.
• Scope of input: Decide which stakeholder groups should have input to innovative activities. Do
you want to focus efforts on a small sub-segment of employees, or reach out to a broader

2. range? Is a specific business unit or region important to your success, or not? Do you want to
focus on internal resources, or seek input / support by partners externally? Deciding on
appropriate stakeholders will help define the type of activities undertaken.
• Activity planning: There is an infinite variety of activities that organizations can use to generate
new ideas, and hopefully get them executed effectively. Including an outline of the various
activities that an innovation program may look to launch is essential. It may also help to
include an honest assessment of costs, expected impact, stakeholder involvement and plans to
improve and scale over time.
• Resourcing management: Most innovation efforts that I work with, whether in a large or small
organizations, have limited resources to support their efforts. Including directions and
thoughts around the sourcing and allocation of resources will help frame your planning. It is
also worth considering unconventional approaches to securing resources, including
supporting employee networks and broader crowdsourcing efforts.
• Multi-year perspective: With these plans it is important to set out a multi-year approach to
innovation development. Generally activities start smaller and build over time, assuming
agreed performance targets are being achieved. Beyond year-1 the planning can be kept
vague, but this kind of approach emphasizes that this is not a passing initiative or corporate
fad.
• Goals and metrics: I have talked about this in the past, but I can’t emphasize the importance of
focusing on the development of specific metrics for any innovative activity.