Innovation Intake Process to Enrich Innovation Pipeline
A methodical innovation intake process is key to enriching and prioritizing great innovation work. Be systematic and rigorous to get the maximum results.
In a previous piece, we delved into the concept of ideas being the lifeblood of innovation. It's crucial to understand that in the early phases of idea generation, distinguishing between good and bad ideas is not only challenging but also counterproductive. This next phase demands a diverse set of inputs, acknowledging that ideas may not be sufficiently defined for immediate action or fit for the innovation strategy overall. Therefore, a formalized intake process becomes indispensable.
The intake process then acts as a lung for the innovation process, enriching our early innovation ideas with the oxygen needed to be useful to the overall business. This is also the beginning of what can be termed as 'placing bets' in the world of corporate innovation. Given the constraints of time, resources, and capital, it is imperative from this point forward to focus on identifying the maximum possible value with the least effort. This mantra becomes a common refrain throughout the innovation intake process.
Source
In these initial stages, we often grapple with limited information, mostly assumptions, and some light desk research. Our goal is to fill in these gaps to better understand and evaluate the ideas. The process starts with sourcing ideas through a standard intake template. The emphasis here is on making it easy and straightforward to submit ideas. This requires fighting the temptation to demand overly detailed information. An automated and self-serve approach is ideal, ensuring that understanding and evaluating the idea is straightforward, but not burdensome to submit.
Curate
Once ideas are sourced, the next task is to curate them. This involves building objective requirements for an initial triage, rapidly sorting, and identifying ideas. With potentially hundreds of ideas flowing in iteratively, it’s vital to structure a templated set of data points that transition smoothly into a database or online tracking sheet, minimizing manual effort. You may need different input fields based on the horizon of the idea—whether it involves known problems with existing customers or uncharted territories—is critical to later stages of evaluation. This step isn’t about judging ideas but rather categorizing them within the portfolio segments, which might require some follow-up discussions and secondary research to flesh them out.
Prioritize
After curation comes the prioritization step. Here, the goal is to identify ideas with a higher likelihood of success. The focus is on understanding if an idea is already in progress elsewhere in the business, if similar attempts failed in the past, and how relevant the idea is to current needs and goals. For this, tools like a shared Airtable or Excel sheet for idea tracking prove invaluable to record what has been done. At some point you may want to move to a simple data base. However, this stage involves minimal effort but is crucial for appropriately categorizing ideas in the innovation portfolio.
Vet
The next phase is vetting ideas against the overall innovation strategy. The focus here shifts to ideas that will benefit from rigorous testing, align with strategic priorities, and hold substantial potential business value. At this point, individuals will take some dedicated time for sizing and evaluating ideas. Hence why prioritizing before you get to this stage is key. The focus of the work here can involve deeper market research, discussions with internal experts, and an evaluation of internal capabilities. The outcome is to build enough early understanding of the idea to evaluate its strategic alignment, market potential, and implementation feasibility.
Backlog
An idea can go a couple of different places at this stage. It can be discarded out of hand if it doesn't fit with the overall goals of the business (unlikely that a car company is going to become a candy bar manufacturer). If the idea is incremental improvement on existing offerings within an existing BU, it is usually going to be best executed by the team working within that BU. If the idea is too large in scope or investment and can't be broken down into smaller pieces for validation, than pushing it into annual planning makes sense. This is the point at which you want to ruthlessly prioritize the ideas with the highest likelihood to greatly impact customer/business value. For limited innovation teams, time, and investment, only the most likely and impactful ideas should go into the innovation funnel.
A word of advice: while initially, senior management approval might be necessary for buy-in, it’s vital to move towards a process where innovation management teams are empowered to execute against a clear innovation strategy. Avoid as much as possible having executive teams pick winners at this early stage to prevent bias and to foster a culture of market-backed evidence.
Briefs
Finally, the ideas that survive this rigorous process are organized into backlogs across the innovation portfolio. This involves creating briefs that provide clear direction for innovation teams to execute with little, if any, additional input is needed. Tools like a lean business model canvas can be instrumental in outlining the idea and its assumptions, detailing key guidance on core assumptions, hypotheses, resourcing, investment, and timing considerations.
In conclusion, the innovation intake process is a strategic, structured approach to handling the influx of ideas. It involves careful curation, prioritization, and alignment with strategic goals, ensuring that the innovation pipeline remains robust, relevant, and aligned with the organization’s long-term objectives.