The generation of new, valuable ideas is critical for the long term success of any organisation. In their book The Principles of Humanocracy, Hamel and Zanini posit that the pace of an organisation’s evolution is determined by the number of new ideas it generates. Some organisations rely on Eureka moments to provide these new ideas. Think of Isaac Newton, who supposedly developed his theory of gravity after witnessing an apple fall from a tree. Or the original Eureka moment, when Greek mathematician Archimedes realised how to determine the volume of an irregular shape whilst taking a bath, and took to the streets naked crying “Eureka!” (“I have found it'').

Other organisations recognise that these Eureka moments, which can be thought of as bolts of lightning, will not reliably produce valuable ideas. However when seeking to strengthen their innovation pipelines, many then misdiagnose their pain points. They may believe the problem is a lack of resources - firepower, money, or data - or perhaps a lack of stimulus, such as from customers, competitors, or adjacent industries. Our experience with clients shows that in fact the biggest barrier to a strong pipeline of valuable ideas is the absence of practices that nurture and systemise innovation.

Your problem is less likely a lack of resources, and more likely a lack of practices channelling your resources toward innovation

Systemise innovation by establishing practices that ringfence resources and engage all stakeholders.

To increase the flow of innovations generated by your team, stop relying on Eureka moments and take steps to systemise innovation. Implement a set of practices that build the requisite employee skills, engage all stakeholders, promote cross-collaboration to tear down information silos, and ringfence resources for the generation of new ideas.

In a previous article exploring Corporate Barriers to Intrapreneurship, we explained how Sahar Hashemi OBE advocates individuals pushing back against “comfort admin” that doesn’t create value, and instead blocking time for idea generation. The Role of HR in Maximising Innovation ROI focused on why support functions such as HR are critical in developing and maintaining your innovation engine. 

Financial software provider, Intuit, is a great example of how to systemise innovation by ringfencing resources and drawing upon support functions. Intuit’s founder, Scott Cook’s philosophy was “decision by experiment” rather than “decision by bureaucracy”. Cook wanted his employees to get out into the field, discover unmet needs, develop hypotheses about how to meet them, build prototypes, and test them with real customers. To instil this culture of innovation at Intuit, he made a conscious effort to make experimentation a company-wide capability. 

First, employees are given innovation training through Intuit’s Design for Delight onboarding curriculum which builds skills in three areas: customer empathy, idea development, and rapid prototyping. This approach draws upon design thinking, which advocates acquiring and leveraging customer insights to create better services, products and processes. 

“Design for Delight is our #1 secret weapon at Intuit. There is no #2” - Steve Cook, Founder and CEO of Intuit

Similar to Google’s 20% rule, Intuit employees are also given 10% unstructured time to allocate to passion projects. They have flexibility over how to use this time, with many banking it over time before dedicating a whole week to problem solving. Employees are encouraged to collaborate with colleagues from different departments to prevent ideas being siloed or prematurely killed, and to tap into a greater range of skills and perspectives. 

Intuit also has several funds dedicated to testing new ideas; each department has an experimentation budget. Aspiring experimenters can compete for funds in periodic challenges, such as hackathons. The CEO fund, established by Cook, ensures promising but novel ideas aren’t starved of resources.

Finally, Intuit recognises that support functions are key enablers of innovation: Its IT department was challenged to make online test set-up as frictionless as possible. Its legal department was asked to publish guidelines on how to run experiments that don’t require legal sign-off. Its HR department puts job applicants into a live Intuit experiment before making the final hiring decision.

If you are a leader wondering how to supercharge your team’s innovation engine and reduce reliance on ad-hoc Eureka moments, start with practices that allocate your resources to empower and incentivise innovation. This is an important preliminary step to avoid misdiagnosing your problem as a lack of resources. 

Intuit provides great examples of specific practices that will support your innovation efforts:

• Allocate protected time to experimentation and passion projects

• Encourage cross-departmental communication and collaboration

• Award funding to promising experiments, to move from idea generation to implementation

• Maintain a feedback loop with your team to understand innovation pain points, and look for problems which your support functions can solve

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