Challenge 10: Do you collaborate with others to increase chances to access innovation?
Diagnosis
In today’s fast moving and continuously changing society, no company can or should do everything alone. Innovation networks are collaborative associations that gather a wide range of entities from different sectors and regions with the purpose of creating, sharing, and implementing innovative ideas that are beneficial for business environment and society in general. The innovation networks can include various participants such as: companies, NGOs, universities, communities, governments, and customers.
Innovation networks are accessed when a company is open to look for ideas and solutions outside its own internal environment. They foster collaboration among partners, provide access to know-how and resources and offer help in finding creative solutions to challenges different businesses face on the market.
The less important you consider the help from other people, institutions, and companies to implement innovation, the harder this process will be. Innovation requires a lot of resources: time, finance, human factor etc. You cannot achieve true innovation by transforming your ideas in final product, services, and/or processes, if you do not consider that innovation networks are an essential part of the development pathway.
To try to understand the importance of innovation networks for your company, please analyse the aspects presented in the table below.
Positive aspects | Negative aspects |
|---|---|
Do you have people in your company who can build and maintain long-term networks? | There are no people in your company who enjoy neither building and maintaining networks, nor already have such cross-functional networks created. |
Have you organized an innovation workshop or any other type of an internal event on innovation topic? and included employees you considered interested in new ideas and innovations? | You have never thought of organizing a meeting on innovation because you have not considered that your employees will become enthusiastic about the topic just by attending an introduction course. |
Have you considered started editing a newsletter for the employees in which the most important trends of the company and industry are presented once or twice a month? | You have not considered necessary to regularly Inform your team on the innovation process development in the company and industry. |
Do you usually ask questions or ask your team members for feedback? A regular activation of the members of your innovation network ensures that it remains vibrant | You do not consider that involving your team members regularly into the innovation process by asking for feedback is so important for them to stay connected. |
Have you organized ideas competitions on different topics? Have you encouraged employees to participate in such competitions and freely present their creative ideas? | You have not considered that organizing an ideas competition will actually show you which of your employees are really interested in the innovation process and can add value to your innovation network. |
Have you invited customers and other stakeholders to be part of your innovation network? | You have not considered that starting a innovation network with stakeholders outside your company will really help you exchange know-how that could boost innovation. |
When inviting outside partners, have you run an audit to select the right partners for your innovation network? Was your goal to find partners that help you enhance your strengths and reduce weaknesses? | You have not considered selecting your partners will have a big impact on completing the know-how that could help you access new opportunities and markets. |
Do you invest in nurturing your network by building trust, and reciprocity among partners? Do you encourage sharing of know-how, experience, market information among partners? | You do not consider that working too much to maintain your network motivated and engaged is compulsory if they have joined your network due to common goals. |
Do you analyse the impact of the innovation network? Do you benefit from the added value and the outcomes resulting from the collaboration with your partners? | You do not consider necessary to communicate the impact of your innovation network to your stakeholders. You know that your network helps you but have not found the time to analyse its impact in detail. |
Do you evaluate the performance of your network? Are you ready to accept changes and take risks by changing your network structure if improvement needed? | You consider as stressful any decision regarding changing the innovation network structure. You do not agree with the idea of taking risks by changing partners during innovation development. |
1. Fill in the table with your initial assessment regarding each aspect and the way it is reflected in your company.
2. Take between 2 and 4 weeks to intentionally observe your team and their potential in creating networks and improve them in the company benefit as an important support for innovation.
3. Also analyse yourself, your approach on creating external networks and your openness to sharing information with different types of partners for the future common benefit of innovation.
4. At the end of the selected period, organize a meeting with selected employees with network building skills and discuss the conclusions of what you have identified as weak and strong points in your organisation from the innovation networks’ point of view.
Actions for implementation
If you observe that negative aspects are common in your company, while positive aspects are barely present, you must take seriously building your own and efficient innovation network.
Your objective should be creating an innovation network based on win-win partnerships. Finding the right partners can be a real challenge. You need to understand your networks’ partners and the fact that they also have different goals from one another even if the share a common object that pushed them toward your innovation network.
Actions to be implemented to reach your goal can include:
1. Choose your partners so that they work best together and complement each other. It is very important to analyse collaborative attributes of your potential partners at this point. Start with the individual attributes meaning what a partner can offer to an innovative network. Then take one step further towards the collaborative attributes that make the potential partner attractive for your network such as: complementary resources, extensive know-how, compatible values.
2. Decide what type of innovator you want to be and choose your strategic partnerships accordingly:
- Defenders seek stability, niche markets with limited product portfolio and develop strategies to defend their position on the market through price competition and product quality.
- Prospectors permanently seek entering new markets and accept a high risk for their investment, are flexible and adaptable to market requirements.
- Analysers are mixing the strategies of defenders with the flexibility of prospectors learning from their mistakes and creating an innovative product/service/process based on a detailed market analysis.