Corporations need to innovate or they will be left behind by competitors. Managing innovation may seem contradictory, since innovation involves change and the adoption of new methods, but there are structured approaches to ensuring innovation in the corporate sphere.
Corporate innovation management refers to the process of controlling all activities when introducing new technique or approach. In a practical sense, this means coming up with ideas, developing them, prioritizing and choosing the best and then implementing them by putting them into practice. This could involve launching a new product or manufacturing technique or changing existing, or adding new, internal processes. This means that innovation can occur in an almost endless variety of ways.
There are, however, key aspects to Corporate innovation management that can be described by the terms capability, structures, culture and strategy. Each is described briefly below.
• Capability – this is an overall term used to describe the skills and resources that an organization has for producing and managing innovation. It principally revolves around human capital (ie people) that have the skills, abilities and unique insights in their role that leads to effective innovation.
• Structures – this refers to the organizational structures such as teams and management that reflect the processes and infrastructure of an organization. With the right structures in place an organization can operate effectively and implement innovation more easily since people are already organized in the best possible configuration to operate effectively.
• Culture – structures enable the effective use of an organization’s capabilities and in a similar way the culture of an organization reflects the effective use of the capabilities of employees. By having a pro-innovation culture, employees are encouraged to think in innovative ways and to suggest them freely. This can involve emphasizing traits in employees such as placing an emphasis on them constantly thinking of ways to improve processes, valuing their on-going learning and education, considering failure as important as success from the point of view of learning and providing sufficient freedom and responsibility in a work role to include innovation as part of the job description.
• Strategy – refers to the overall plan that an organization has for achieving success in the longer term by planning for, and being open to, innovation wherever it occurs within the organization. Sometimes strategy involves making a deliberate choice between competing visions for innovative actions but at its simplest it simply means using innovation to achieve long-term, strategic goals.
