Never Innovate Alone: How to Collaborate for Organizational Impact

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s t r at e g y

Before making big strategic bets, effective corporate innovators build a strong foundation of internal partnerships.

Kingshuk Das, Strategy Lead, Jump Associates, San Mateo, California

31© 2012 The Design Management Institute

ing a whole new business division and brand (targeting the new industry) from the ground up. What happened at these two firms that made the results so different?

As in any real-world situation, the truth is complicated. But the quality of the ideas was not at issue. Nor were the designers at Company A any less talented or prolific than the ones at Company B. The key differ-

Company B, a large manufactur-ing company, pointed its own explora-tion group (also comprising designers and researchers) toward new vertical markets.

Three years later, Company A was at status quo, with millions of dollars spent on various initiatives and consultants but still showing anemic growth. Company B, on the other hand, had succeeded in build-

In recent years, two companies I’ve worked with set out to grow their businesses in markets that were new to them.

Company A, a leading consumer goods “house of brands,” asked brand managers to leverage their concept exploration folks (trained in design and research) to come up with break-through products that would lead to new revenue streams.

Never Innovate Alone: How to Collaborate for Organizational Impact by Kingshuk Das

Design Collaboration

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did some brilliant work to come up with dozens of breakthrough ideas. But none of these made it past the marketing department, let alone onto retail shelves. One by one, the ideas were thrown against the solid wall of the company’s dashboard of current brand strategies, and they failed to stick. They can still be found in the idea graveyard—a thick set of bind-ers full of disruptive concepts in the brand managers’ file cabinets.

In contrast, most of the innovation efforts at Company B evolved organically, through informal networking and unof-ficial initiatives. Leadership helped by getting out of the

way on most counts, and by pulling strings for the groups where it really mattered.

The popular press hypes dramat-ic disruptions, and innovation leaders are often beguiled into thinking they need to go after the big wins first. The myth around design and innovation is well established—the lone ranger fighting against the establishment to bring world-changing ideas to a grateful public. So are the motivations ascribed to the creative instinct—to stand out, have a unique voice, and be different.

Reality, however, points in exactly the opposite direction.

building strategic partnerships within organizations is what sets effective innovators apart from the merely ambitious.

There’s more. If collaboration is important, the way you collaborate is even more so. We have seen many innovations devalued by poorly-thought-through partnerships and a cavalier attitude to involving people within corporations—the proverbial Copy-To: in corporate emails.

This article outlines specific approaches to partnering that help innovation leaders overcome the inevitable organizational barriers in large corporations.

Innovation’s demons: high expecta-tions and low uptake

Too often, we’ve seen high expecta-tions prompt innovation teams to aim too high, too soon. And low uptake sends them down a vicious cycle of us-versus-them behavior that actively makes things worse. There is a better way.

Let’s go back to our original example. Innovators in Company A

ence was in how design and innova-tion efforts were organized and rolled out at each firm.

Designers at Company A worked within the narrow confines of their job definitions and through tradition-al hand-offs among departments. The process worked well for incremental innovation, but not for delivering the breakthrough growth that was the need of the hour.

At Company B, design was able to partner with other depart-ments—in spite of vastly dif-ferent world-views and person-alities—to identify and work toward shared outcomes. They did this mainly by tapping into the other groups’ motivations, ignor-ing personal biases, and playing to their own strengths.

The difference in outcomes highlights a critical detail too often overlooked when corporations seek to innovate at scale: Successful innova-tion isn’t just about selling concepts, it’s also about building coalitions. It’s time for innovation practitioners to widen their focus beyond the bril-liance of ideas or individuals. One would think the message is obvious, if only it weren’t for the number of times we find otherwise-world-class organizations get it wrong. The un-heralded, behind-the-scenes work of

Too often, we’ve seen high expectations prompt innovation teams to aim too high, too soon.

Never I nnovate alone: How to Col laborate for Organizat ional I mpac t

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In large organizations, innovation home runs are the culmination of an innovation leader’s journey, not the beginning. The journey starts with building a foundation of credibility and deep relationships with folks in the organization who will later enable the big wins. Building this foundation requires a considered sequencing of innovation focus. In our experience, this sequence occurs in three stages:

Stage 1: Demonstrate action.Stage 2: Build connections.Stage 3: Invest in the future.

In order to understand the sequence, it helps to understand what successful innovation groups focus on in each stage, explicitly or implicitly (Figure 2 on next page).

Successful innovation teams choose and manage their focus based on an unvarnished understanding of where they are in their stage of devel-opment. This helps cut through the twin challenges of high expectations and low uptake. Knowing which stage it’s in can help the team make better decisions, collaborate more effectively, and be strategically relevant to the company.

Stage 1: Demonstrate action

When an innovation group is first formed, it can be tempted to try to

Is it quick wins? Profits dem-onstrate success, albeit short-term success, in a language the organization can understand, and one that is hard to argue with.

Is it to build trust? Partners implies that the innovation group is com-mitted to the success of the whole company, not just to their own success. Creating value for others through your innovation project is critical to build-ing credibility.

Is it to solve a big issue? Platforms are what most folks want to shoot for—big ideas that transcend indi-vidual offerings and provide reliable revenue streams for the organization.

a roadmap for innovation leader-ship: profits, partners, platforms

Typically, an innovation group has a variety of project ideas. Some provide immediate payback, while others seed long-term value and strategic direc-tion. The organizational value created by innovation projects falls primarily under one of three categories: profits, partners, and platforms. Each project accomplishes something different for both the company and the innovation team (Figure 1). It’s useful to treat projects differently based on their in-tended value. For every project you’re working on, ask yourself: What is the primary reason I am doing this?

Figure 1: What is the Organizational Value of an Innovation Project?A team should undertake a project for one of three key reasons.

Pro�tsShow the world that you’re taking action to increase revenue through quick hits

PartnersDevelop trust with

potentially key allies in other parts

of the company

PlatformsBegin solving the

long-term strategic problems that face

the company

Very few projects are likely to achieve all three goals


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create the kind of major innovations that will transform the whole busi-ness. That’s the last thing it should do! Rather, it’s imperative that the group demonstrate its ability to add immediate value to current business by helping the company with things like gaining more customers, increas-ing revenue, and decreasing costs.

Teams that cannot demonstrate that they understand the needs of the current business are often disbanded before they can bring their big ideas to fruition. They have their resources and mandates distributed across the line organizations. Management begins to see the whole innovation project as an interesting experiment

from which they learned a lot but probably wouldn’t do again.

Designers therefore need to build credibility in the organization and gain respect for being relevant to the bottom line. At this point, it’s impor-tant to focus on getting things done

and on creating a record of clear wins. Almost all resources should go to-ward Profits projects, with just a little bit toward Partners projects. For that reason alone, designers may want to seek partners outside the company to avoid political entanglements. Spend

almost no time on Platforms projects, even if that’s the ultimate goal.

Stage 2: Build connections

It’s a given that most groups’ long-term success depends on their ability to get projects implemented. Yet all

the success in demonstrating action can’t be achieved alone, or designers will alienate the rest of the company. Having demonstrated its relevance to the core business through the tan-gible benefits of its initial projects, the innovation team should quickly move its focus to building strong connec-tions with the rest of the company. A great way to do this is to help other groups gain more customers, make more money, and be seen as success-ful inside the company. This helps enroll those groups in working with the innovation group to create value in the future.

Design groups that fail to build connections naturally find themselves isolated. At some point, management begins to wonder why the resources of the company aren’t being lever-aged, and may even think the whole endeavor is a bit of a red herring.

By shifting more attention toward

Figure 2:What Organizational Value Should You Focus on Right Now?Many successful innovation groups evolve through three stages of focus.

1. Demonstrate Action. Focus on getting things done, and creating a record of clear wins.

2. Build Connections. Focus on strong connections to the rest of the company to ensure impact.

3. Invest in the Future. Reinvent your mandate towards creating sustainable long-term advantage for the company.

Profits Partners Platforms

Left alone, big-picture visionaries often alienate their organizations.


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creating strong ties with more of the organization, the team can help bol-ster its reputation as a resource rather than as a competitor. Still focusing on revenue-generating projects, the team should now initiate an equal number of Profits and Partners projects, and maybe even a Platforms project.

Stage 3: Invest in the future

By now, the design and innovation folks have achieved some recognition for their role in helping to build new business opportunities. At this point, it’s important to revisit the mandate of creating sustainable long-term advantage for the company.

Teams that fail to turn their attention to the long term may find themselves punished, in a way, for their success. Management may be so impressed with their ability to generate profits and leverage the rest of the organization that they look to the team as excellent management material for running a line business. They may then choose to fold the entire group back into the rest of the organization, and long-term opportu-nities will go unexplored.

To avoid this, the team should spend a majority of its time work-ing on Platforms projects, with some Partners projects to help cultivate its internal relationships. At this stage,

it should spend very little time on Profits projects.

a path to success

The sequence detailed in Figure 2 accurately describes the trajectory fol-lowed by the innovators at Company B. They first focused on using design research to help improve current sales in the target industry. They did this by making the sales team look good in front of their customers, and arm-ing them with knowledge-based tools to solve customer problems. This was especially important because the sales function was a dominant driver of strategic decisions at the firm, and senior executives had often been pro-moted up from sales positions.

Next, they leveraged the new sales-driven relationships they forged with customers to enroll marketing, engineering, and other business units. These groups appreciated the invalu-able benefit of having real customers with whom they could pilot new products and new messaging.

Their last step, after many col-laborative pilots, was to partner with the corporate strategy group to build a business case based on what they had learned from the pilots. This fi-nally triggered the creation of a whole new business division targeting the new market with innovative products

and services.These experiences offer critical

lessons for leaders looking to nurture innovation in large organizations. Although the roadmap described here offers a way through the complexities of organizations, we need principles that can act as guard rails preventing us from straying off the path.

Principles for effective collaboration

Creating new businesses that are about more than just products often means looking across groups to connect capabilities in new ways. In siloed companies, asking for coopera-tion among businesses or functions can be tough, making it difficult to experiment with new ideas. Still, investing in those connections can unlock new energy and unexpected ideas. Here are five principles that help bridge silos in the corporation by enrolling functions that may think and work differently from design.

1. Evolve as a leader. Go from creator to facilitator. Designers should not be fighting for credibility anymore. They should be taking on bigger problems, more responsibility, and more budgets. For some, the natural next step is to help the businesses use tools they’ve devel-oped to make design and innovation


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opened doors for innovators with their giant Rolodex, and in exchange piggy-backed on field trips to study customers through a fresh, noncom-mercial lens.

For its part, Marketing lagged be-hind in this quest because its survey reports pointed to little opportunity in the vertical market in question. The design researchers were able to offer Marketing the rich ethnographic studies they had done. The unspoken needs they had uncovered, in turn, informed new surveys and resulted in better data.

Several smaller business units of Company B (for example, the people who sold accessories) lacked the resources and bandwidth to do their own research and development, but had a ground-level understand-ing of their own customers. They brought their knowledge to the mix and started leveraging the design-sales-marketing triumvirate for design inspiration to wow their customers.

4. Feed the core engine. Despite what companies tell the analysts, innovation isn’t anyone’s top priority. The top priority is: Make this year’s numbers. Innovation might be number three or four on the list. As one manager at company A said, “When the beast is hungry, it can’t think beyond its next meal.” Translat-

scenarios, something wonderful happened. Old orthodoxies melted away. People were able to step outside their functional biases and focus on the human problems they were experiencing. Engineers were able to come up with tips for salespeople, and hard-boiled sales veterans could make delicate design suggestions.

Inspired by the experience, the group invited nonresearchers to accompany them on field trips to cus-tomer locations. The feedback loop started by such visits led to widely shared, gut-level customer empathy across different functions.

3. Tap into the motivations of different corporate divisions.It’s not rocket science, it’s Dale Carnegie. To get what you need from people, figure out ways to get them what they need. Don’t reserve your empathy for customers only—use it for colleagues, whether friends or foes. Designers have hidden too long behind the no-one-gets-it defense. That’s a great way to ensure no one ever gets them.

Company B design researchers, for example, found that customers allowed them to enter and interact because they weren’t trying to sell anything. This was intriguing to Sales, who would give an arm and a leg for that kind of access. Sales

part of their growth strategies. That means playing a new role—that of a broker, connecting people and ideas. The job of enabling the enablers depends less on people and resources than on experience and social capital. The more we know, the less we need.

Furthermore, coming up with game-changing ideas and making them succeed demands the idealism of Mandela and the pragmatism of Machiavelli. And those are rarely found in the same person. The truth is that in our world, real leaders come in pairs and trios that balance out the creative and strategic sides to innova-tion. Left alone, big-vision people tend to alienate their organizations. But working with partners who can think tactically, they can make their ideas actionable and get others to buy in.

2. Design from the outside in to enroll potential partners.When it comes to design and innova-tion, it helps to start from the lives of customers and work backward into the firm. In the past, Company B de-sign researchers had presented many concepts to sales, marketing, and engineering, all of which had received noncommittal head-nods.

But when they recreated the customer environment at their prod-uct development center and invited those colleagues to role-play customer


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tegic conversations every day.With this new attention comes

new responsibility. Designers no longer have the luxury of being the dissident voices from the back of the room protesting against the lack of such values as creativity and intuition at corporations. They are on stage now, and have to prove they can create value for, and in collaboration with, other players.

When design fails to create im-pact, as in Company A, it confirms common perceptions that designers are dreamers disconnected from the reality of the organization and the market. That leads corporations to question design’s relevance to the biggest challenges facing them today. The message here is straightforward: If design and innovation leaders want more influence in setting direc-tion at corporations, they need to put more skin in the game and collabo-rate for business outcomes, not just for offerings.

Innovation is a team sport, and winning requires that leaders be stra-tegic about how innovators collaborate with the rest of the organization. n

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make our prototype small enough to be tested quickly and cheaply but big enough to inform an eventual full-scale rollout? What’s cheap enough to kill, but big enough to matter?

Company B designers built rela-tionships with progressive customers to pilot products, services, and mes-saging in real-world settings two years before there was a real business—or even a business plan. They uncovered the business model on-site, working with salespeople and customers. The big break came when they realized they could help salespeople shift their client conversation from “How many units do you need?” to “How can we help you with the insights we are uncovering?” It was a service and knowledge-led business model, rather than just products that were being commoditized every year.

Conclusion: Collaborate with clear intent

Corporations worldwide are faced with the need to grow even through economic downturns. This growth imperative has fed a greater interest in the fields of design and innovation as potential sources of value creation. In addition, design-led brands have had a disruptive effect on a range of indus-tries, sparking wider interest in the design perspective. Designers around the country are invited to more-stra-

ed, that means: Before selling anyone an ambitious plan for new ventures or new offerings, we’d better address their burning issues. Those issues may be about feeding the near-term pipeline, or it may be about using de-sign to help them reduce costs. Giving businesses what they want today is the best way to lay the groundwork for more strategic initiatives.

For example, at some compa-nies, design strategy groups start by introducing common design elements across product categories. This helps the business cut costs in both product development and the supply chain. Helping those managers buy into de-sign sets the stage for initiatives that use design to drive more-dramatic innovation.

5. Prototype the business model, not just products.Few companies can afford to invest in $30 million’s worth of hope. No amount of deep research, prototyping, and testing can ensure a new prod-uct’s success if the business model behind it fails. Today, implementation in the marketplace is more important than coming up with an idea. That means design innovators not only need to develop more-robust com-mercialization models but also to test them early and often. The challenge is getting the right scale. How do we

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Never Innovate Alone: How to Collaborate for Organizational Impact