In your organization, chances are you have witnessed the situations like, Innovation initiatives are scattered across the organization or R&D projects team responsible for innovation, hardly have time or our entrepreneurial people get no real support from leadership. If you have, you are not alone.
Simple fact that innovation initiatives are taking place in the organization, itself reflects the right intention of the organization to stay ahead of the competition by focussing on Innovation. However, for enterprises that want real benefit, need is to structure the initiatives through a process called Innovation System. Accelerator program could be one such structured construct to give solutions that have the potential to address organization challenges through co-offering to its clients.
Accelerator program can have teams sourced internally from the organization or externally from the startups that offers solutions matching the corporate challenges.
Key steps in launching an accelerator program are
a) Identify the key challenges that organization is facing and want to address. Generally, these are losing market share, cash cow products nearing their peak and /or venture in to areas that are seen promising in horizon 3.
b) Outreach to identify and selection of the teams that will form part of the program. The selected team(s) should be able to provide the solution to the challenges that corporate has identified. Sometimes the solutions may not match exactly, however, accelerator program provides that forum to brainstorm and threadbare the need and appropriate fix to the challenge. The horizon used for validation is internal fitness for the organization’s other products and external, as to gaps or glut in the competitive scenarios.
c) Design the program to factor formation of idea selection board, program duration, value elicitation for participants, engagement model (ideation and boot-camps), solution validation, investment availability and mode of disbursement, onboarding of the strategic business units that will imbibe the solutions among others.
d) Roll-out with structured mentoring from internal and external mentors of different function domain and possibly provide the pathways to the market access within the organization or through the collective connections in the industry. Participants value network of organizing team from within the organization and the industry, to give them qualified leads.
e) Monitor the progress the ventures are making and facilitate further support, based on each venture’s customized needs
The program should be organized and run, as a startup, with quick decision making and shortcut processes for participants to get accepted within the organization.
