An innovator is someone who has a multidisciplinary view on their job and has a set of experiences which has taught them a portfolio of capabilities, which they are applying almost in a general management-like way to the task of innovation. The reality is there are not as many people as we would like who understand and have that full set of capabilities—and more importantly, who can operate within a large, complex organization and deploy them in such a way that they can have disproportionate impact.
Only few corporate managers have the luxury of handpicking and assembling their dream team from the start. More often, you must create your dream team by conjuring brilliance from a group of inherited employees. In this case, it is leader’s job to grow the talent he already has. Onboarding and powering up innovation go beyond hiring people with relevant experience and putting them to work. It requires strategic vision, a structured systematic approach, resilience, a precise understanding of limitations, focus on business value, and most importantly—an innovation team.
Innovation leader is an important piece of this jigsaw puzzle. This person needs a thread across the life cycle of the innovation program, to convert vision into reality and owning up what these things will become. We need an innovation CEO, who would have the vision of mid-term to long term horizon. Other team members then need to integrate into the vision. A lot of times people think about, “I’m going to put my A-list high performer into a talent program,” which is great. But oftentimes a high performer is defined as someone who can—with high reliability—deliver the quarter, and may be different from a high performer or someone who is going to start something from scratch. This is the difference that is needed in the Innovation leader, who can make it work from scratch, can envision future possibilities and is a great collaborator.
On the team, people are needed who “learn quickly.” A much-needed trait as you are going to be interacting with people – internally and externally, who are working on uncharted areas – technology, business model or otherwise. And it needs quick learning for better understanding of the perspective, background thought, and compelling preposition that the idea inherits.
The team members are not spotted by the HR, mostly. They are spotted by the CEO, innovation head or business unit heads, who can sense how business challenges will be addressed and translated into long term value creation by the team members they are trying to recruit. Assembling in the right multidisciplinary cross-functional teams with the right inclusiveness and diversity, is an important aspect, to get ears from the ground. This diverse team will bring in the perspective from each market, that will help refine some ideas to accept or reject, basis the organization mandate.
The innovation team is generally small. Compensation and rewards system will work differently for these set of people. They will not be measured by the performance on quarter-on-quarter or fit in to bell curve.
