Category Archives: collaboration

Co-Creation and Innovation

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

Co-creation has become a major part of the innovation process, allowing companies to develop new products and services while engaging their customers in a meaningful way. By allowing customers to have a direct input in the product development process, companies can ensure that the end result meets their exact needs and preferences.

The concept of co-creation has been around for some time, but it has become increasingly important in recent years as companies recognize the need to stay ahead of the competition and provide customers with the best possible experience. By leveraging co-creation, companies can ensure that their products and services are tailored precisely to their customers’ needs, rather than guessing what those needs may be.

One of the most common forms of co-creation is crowdsourcing, which allows companies to solicit ideas from a large group of people. This can be done through online platforms that allow customers to submit their ideas, or by engaging customers directly in the design process. This process can take place in a variety of ways, such as online surveys or workshops, allowing customers to provide direct input into the product or service they’re looking for.

Using co-creation can also help companies to increase customer loyalty. By giving customers a direct say in the design process, companies can create a sense of ownership, and customers may feel more invested in the product or service they’ve helped create. This can lead to increased customer loyalty, as customers may be more likely to purchase the product or service and recommend it to others.

Finally, co-creation can help companies to gain valuable insights into customer preferences and trends. By engaging customers directly in the design process, companies can gain an intimate understanding of what customers want and need, which can be invaluable when it comes to developing new products and services.

In short, co-creation is a powerful tool in the innovation process that allows companies to stay ahead of the competition and ensure their products and services are tailored precisely to customer needs. By leveraging co-creation, companies can open up a dialogue with customers, increase customer loyalty, and gain valuable insights into customer trends. All of these benefits make co-creation an essential part of the innovation process.

Image credit: Pexels

Sign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

Harnessing the Power of Diversity

Leave a reply

How to Leverage Different Perspectives in Innovation

Harnessing the Power of Diversity

GUEST POST from Chateau G Pato

Innovation is essential for any organization to stay competitive in today’s ever-changing business landscape. Companies need to learn how to empower their teams to come up with creative solutions to challenging problems in order to remain ahead of the curve. Harnessing the power of diversity is a proven way to spur innovation and drive positive outcomes. A diverse team offers multiple perspectives, enabling them to develop creative, out-of-the-box solutions.

Organizations should be committed to creating an inclusive work culture that promotes collaboration and innovation amongst its employees. They can do this by establishing strong values for diversity and inclusion that encourage different opinions and ideas. Companies should also encourage employees to share their own knowledge and experiences; creating an atmosphere of mutual respect and trust.

With that in mind, here are some tips on how to leverage different perspectives within your organization to drive innovation:

1. Encourage diverse teams: When forming teams and project groups, aim to have a diverse team of individuals who can bring different skills and perspectives to the table. Having a variety of views will foster more creative solutions and lead to better problem solving.

2. Foster an environment of open dialogue: Allowing people to openly discuss their ideas and experiences encourages idea-sharing amongst team members. Create a safe environment where everyone is open and willing to express their ideas and point of view.

3. Promote flexible working arrangements: Allowing for flexible working arrangements enables individuals to work remotely or in different locations, thus leveraging different perspectives. Making sure that everyone can stay connected and access all the resources they need is essential for collaboration and innovation.

4. Leverage technology and tools: Organizations can use technology to promote collaboration and idea-sharing across different locations. Utilizing tools such as video conferencing, online collaboration software, and cloud-based communication platforms will enable team members to exchange ideas effectively and stay connected.

In conclusion, diversity is a powerful source of creativity and innovation. Harnessing the power of different perspectives can lead to improved problem solving and productive solutions. By promoting an inclusive and collaborative work culture, organizations can best leverage different perspectives to spur innovation and drive positive outcomes.

Case Study 1 – Proctor & Gamble

Proctor & Gamble showed the power of leveraging different perspectives when launching their Swiffer mop product. In order to best assess the potential for Swiffer’s success, P&G assembled an R&D team made up of both men and women with varied experience in both household chore and chemical engineering. The team was able to identify potential issues with the product’s use within households and developed creative solutions, ensuring the success of the product in the market.

Case Study 2 – Microsoft

Microsoft showed the power of embracing different perspectives when developing their Kinect game console. Microsoft brought together a diverse team of engineers, designers, and software developers from a variety of cultural, educational, and technical backgrounds, and tasked them with the challenge of developing the console. The team was able to identify opportunities and potential pitfalls of the product, leading to the successful launch of Kinect.

Conclusion

Both of these examples demonstrate how organizations can effectively leverage different perspectives to develop innovative solutions and spur growth. By encouraging open dialogue, embracing flexible working arrangements, and leveraging technology and tools, organizations can best leverage the power of diversity and reap positive outcomes.

One of the great tools I haven’t mentioned that is very useful for increasing the effectiveness of innovation teams is The Nine Innovation Roles created by Braden Kelley, which has been translated into multiple languages and are used by innovation professionals in companies all around the world.

Image credit: Pexels

Sign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

Going Beyond the Business Model Canvas

Leave a reply

Going Beyond the Business Model Canvas

For decades when business people and aspiring entrepreneurs came up with an idea and became serious about commercializing it, they would, by default, create a business plan. Anyone who has ever created a business plan knows they are a LOT of work. And as any innovator knows, most ideas turn out to be garbage. As a result, the creation of most business plans ends up being a waste of time.

All of this wasted time and money in the universes of both corporate innovation and startups was definitely an area of opportunity.

This pain has been solved in part by the Business Model Canvas created by Alex Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur, the Lean Canvas created by Ash Maurya, and by minor variations created by others.

Purpose of the Business Model Canvas

The purpose of both at their core is the same. The Business Model Canvas and the Lean Canvas seek to help entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs and innovators quickly explore the desirability, feasibility and viability of their ideas in a more visual and collaborative way, while also supporting much quicker iterations and revisions to both the value proposition and its path to market.

Where a business plan may take weeks to create, a Business Model Canvas or Lean Canvas can be created in an afternoon.

Where a business plan is often created by one person and revised by others in a serial manner, a Business Model Canvas or Lean Canvas is a group activity, informed by a collection of diverse perspectives and experiences, and challenged, evolved and revised in a real-time, parallel manner.

What excites me most as someone who conducts workshops all around the world and teaches people how to use the Business Model Canvas and other innovation & change tools, is that the Business Model Canvas and Lean Canvas have helped to accelerate a transformation in not only how people are taught, but also how they are permitted to conduct business.

Creating a Business Model Canvas as a Team

The Visual and Collaborative Workplace Transformation

This transformation is a game changer because it represents a growing integration of methods into workshops and meetings that enable facilitators to engage not only auditory learners, but visual, kinesthetic and social learners as well.

This more human approach to prototyping a business helps to add a bit more structure around an idea, in a collaborative way that will more quickly surface gaps and flaws while also testing assumptions, collecting idea fragments into a more holistic value proposition and creating a vision for how to make it real.

But, as we all know, any new business or any potential innovation will create an abundance of required and necessary changes. Unfortunately, whether you are using the Business Model Canvas or the Lean Canvas, the truth and the limitation is that they are but a single tool and can’t help you walk the rest of the path to reality. To create the changes necessary to realize your vision, you will need many more tools.

“When what people do aligns with what they think and feel, then and only then, will you achieve the outcomes you’re looking for.”

The good news is that this more visual and collaborative way of working helps with two of the most important keys to success – buy-in and alignment – and also helps to align mind, body, and spirit to harness the whole brain and its three constructs:

Cognitive (thinking)
Conative (doing)
Affective (feeling)

Outcome-Driven Change Framework by Braden Kelley

Beyond the Business Model Canvas and the Lean Canvas

Visual, collaborative tools like the Business Model Canvas, Lean Canvas, Empathy Map, Value Proposition Canvas, Experience Maps, Service Design, and even Customer Journey Maps have laid the groundwork for a more modern, more powerful way of working that leverages the whole brain of the individual, and all three learning styles of the collective.

And where these tools all represent the beginning of a visual, collaborative endeavor to create change, they are missing the tools to help plan for and execute the changes that are being proposed.

Making the Shift to Human-Centered Change

This is where the Change Planning Toolkit™ powering the Human-Centered Change methodology comes in. It has been designed with the Change Planning Canvas™ at its core to feel familiar to those already using the aforementioned tools and empower teams to take the next steps on their journey to be successful:

Innovation and Intrapreneurship
Startup Creation
Digital Transformation
Design Thinking
New Product Development (NPD)
Service Design
Experience Design
Customer Experience (CX) Improvement Efforts
Projects (make sure you also get the Visual Project Charter™)
Change Initiatives

So, if you’re already familiar with the Business Model Canvas, Lean Canvas, Empathy Map, Value Proposition Canvas, Experience Maps, Service Design, or Customer Journey Maps then you should get a copy of my latest book Charting Change and it will show you the thinking behind the Change Planning Toolkit™, how to use it to maintain the momentum of your team and the energy behind your idea, and how to leverage both to push it forward towards reality.

The Change Planning Toolkit™ will help you beat the 70% change failure rate, create more efficient and effective change initiatives (and even projects), and accelerate your pace of successful change in order to keep up with the accelerating pace of change all around us and to be more nimble, agile, and responsive than your competition.

Three Steps to Human-Centered Change Success

There is a simple three step process for people who want to start saving time and get the jump on their competition today by familiarizing themselves with the Human-Centered Change methodology:

10 free tools available to download now
26 free tools when you buy the book
70+ tools when you license the toolkit

I’ve invested more than $1 million into the Change Planning Toolkit™ so you don’t have to, and so you can leverage this investment to gain all of the benefits above while also saving yourself thousands or millions of dollars in consulting fees – every year.

And for a limited time, there are some exciting FREE training opportunities available to a handful of organizations who contact me.

Accelerate your change and transformation success

Sign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

The Innovation Value of Cross-Pollination

Leave a reply

Internal Mobility as Retention Strategy

The Innovation Value of Cross-Pollination

GUEST POST from Chateau G Pato
LAST UPDATED: January 10, 2026 at 11:16AM

In the current landscape of the global economy, the most valuable currency isn’t capital — it’s human potential. We are witnessing a fundamental shift in the employer-employee social contract. For decades, the “career ladder” was the dominant metaphor for progress. You started at the bottom, climbed vertically within a single functional silo, and retired at the top. But in an era defined by rapid technological disruption and shifting human expectations, that ladder has become a liability. It is rigid, fragile, and increasingly disconnected from how innovation actually happens.

To survive and thrive today, organizations must replace the ladder with the Career Lattice. This human-centered approach to organizational design prioritizes internal mobility not just as an HR checkbox for retention, but as a primary engine for innovation. When we facilitate the movement of talent across traditional boundaries, we trigger a process I call “Organizational Cross-Pollination.”

The Retention Crisis is a Growth Crisis

Why do people leave? Exit interviews often cite compensation, but deeper inquiry reveals a more pervasive cause: stagnation. High-performing individuals are biologically and psychologically wired for growth. When an employee feels they have mastered their domain and sees no path to diversify their skills without leaving the company, they begin to look elsewhere. Retention is not about holding someone in place; it is about providing enough internal space for them to move.

Internal mobility acts as a pressure-release valve for talent. By allowing a software engineer to spend six months with the customer success team, or a marketing strategist to pivot into product development, the organization provides the “newness” and challenge that high-potential employees crave. This human-centric flexibility creates a culture where the organization is seen as a platform for a lifetime of different careers, rather than a single, static destination.

“Innovation is the byproduct of human curiosity meeting organizational opportunity. When we restrict mobility to protect functional silos, we stifle the very curiosity that sustains our competitive advantage. A truly innovative culture is one where the ‘Not Invented Here’ syndrome is cured by people who have actually been ‘There’.” — Braden Kelley

Unlocking the Innovation Value of Cross-Pollination

Beyond retention, the strategic value of internal mobility lies in the breaking of silos. Silos are where innovation goes to die. They create “echo chambers” where teams solve the same problems using the same tired methodologies. Cross-pollination — the movement of people, ideas, and “tacit knowledge” from one department to another — introduces the constructive friction necessary for breakthrough thinking.

An employee moving from Department A to Department B brings with them a unique set of lenses. They see inefficiencies that long-tenured members of the team have become blind to. They recognize patterns that exist across the organization and can connect dots that were previously invisible. This is the Innovation Premium of internal mobility.

Case Study 1: The Global Tech Giant’s Talent Marketplace

A major enterprise software provider faced a significant “brain drain” as mid-level managers sought roles at smaller, more agile startups. The leadership realized that while they had thousands of open roles, their internal hiring process was more bureaucratic than their external one. They implemented an AI-driven Internal Talent Marketplace.

This system allowed employees to see not just full-time roles, but “micro-projects” across the company. A data scientist in the Finance department could spend 10% of their time helping the Sustainability team model carbon footprints. The Result: The company saw a 25% increase in retention for participating employees. More importantly, the Sustainability team launched a new product feature based on a financial modeling technique the data scientist brought from their home department — a feature that became a primary market differentiator within one year.

Case Study 2: The Industrial Manufacturer’s Digital Bridge

A century-old manufacturing firm was struggling to integrate IoT (Internet of Things) sensors into its heavy machinery. Their software developers were brilliant at code but didn’t understand the physical stresses of a factory floor. Conversely, their mechanical engineers knew the machines but feared the digital shift.

The firm launched a “Cross-Pollination Fellowship,” moving mechanical engineers into the software UI/UX teams for 12 months. The Result: The software became significantly more intuitive for actual operators because the designers now possessed deep “domain empathy.” This internal move saved the company an estimated 18 months in development time and resulted in three new patents that combined physical mechanical insights with predictive software algorithms.

The Barrier: Overcoming Talent Hoarding

The biggest obstacle to internal mobility is not technology or lack of interest; it is talent hoarding. Middle managers are often incentivized solely on the output of their specific team. When a star performer wants to move to a different department, the manager views it as a loss rather than an organizational win. To fix this, we must change the incentive structure.

Leaders must be measured on their “Talent Export Rate.” We should celebrate managers who develop employees so effectively that they are recruited by other parts of the business. This requires a human-centered change in mindset: seeing the organization as a single ecosystem where the flow of talent is the lifeblood of the whole, not the property of the part.

A Call to Action for Innovation Leaders

If you are an innovation leader, your job is not just to manage ideas; it is to manage the environment where ideas are born. Internal mobility is the most underutilized tool in your kit. By championing a culture where people can move freely, you are building a resilient, adaptive, and deeply human organization. The next great idea for your company is already inside your building — it just might be sitting in the wrong department.

Frequently Asked Questions

How does internal mobility directly improve the ROI of an innovation program?

Internal mobility improves ROI by reducing “time-to-competency” and “acquisition costs.” When an internal employee moves to a new role, they already understand the organizational culture and network. Furthermore, the cross-pollination of their previous knowledge into a new area often leads to faster problem-solving and unique intellectual property that external hires would take months to develop.

What are “micro-projects” and how do they support retention?

Micro-projects are short-term, part-time assignments that allow employees to contribute to a different department without leaving their current role. They support retention by satisfying the employee’s need for variety and skill-building, effectively “scratching the itch” for change without the risk of a full-scale resignation or transfer.

How can a company start an internal mobility program with limited resources?

Start by mapping the skills your organization needs for its top three innovation goals. Then, identify employees in unrelated departments who possess those skills as hobbies or previous experience. Create a simple “Internal Shadowing” program where these employees spend 4 hours a week with the target team. This low-cost pilot demonstrates value and builds the cultural appetite for more formal mobility later.

Extra Extra: Because innovation is all about change, Braden Kelley’s human-centered change methodology and tools are the best way to plan and execute the changes necessary to support your innovation and transformation efforts — all while literally getting everyone all on the same page for change. Find out more about the methodology and tools, including the book Charting Change by following the link. Be sure and download the TEN FREE TOOLS while you’re here.

Image credits: Unsplash

Sign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

Innovating the Post-Pandemic Office Experience

Leave a reply

The Connected Workspace

LAST UPDATED: December 17, 2025 at 11:49AM

Innovating the Post-Pandemic Office Experience - The Connected Workspace

GUEST POST from Chateau G Pato

The pandemic did not eliminate the office. It eliminated complacency. For decades, organizations treated the workplace as static infrastructure rather than a dynamic system shaping behavior, culture, and innovation. As a human-centered change and innovation practitioner, I see the post-pandemic moment as a rare inflection point: a chance to intentionally design the connected workspace.

The connected workspace recognizes that work happens across physical, digital, and social environments simultaneously. It is not a return-to-office strategy or a remote-work manifesto. It is an experience strategy that aligns space, technology, and leadership behaviors around human needs.

Reframing the Office as a Platform for Value Creation

In the past, offices were optimized for presence. Today, they must be optimized for purpose. This means designing environments that support collaboration, learning, and innovation rather than default individual work. The connected workspace functions as a platform where people come together intentionally to create value that cannot be easily generated alone.

When organizations fail to make this shift, they create friction. Employees question why they are commuting, meetings exclude remote voices, and culture becomes fragmented. Connection must be designed, not assumed.

Case Study One: Microsoft’s Human-Centered Hybrid Evolution

Microsoft approached hybrid work as a design challenge rather than a policy problem. By combining qualitative employee research with quantitative work-pattern data, the organization gained insight into how collaboration, focus, and well-being intersect.

Offices were redesigned to prioritize collaboration, while technology investments ensured remote participants were equally visible and heard. Teams were empowered to define norms that fit their context, reinforcing autonomy and trust. Microsoft’s approach demonstrates that a connected workspace is a living system requiring continuous learning and adaptation.

Technology Should Disappear, Not Dominate

In a truly connected workspace, technology becomes invisible. Tools exist to support human interaction, not to dictate it. When employees spend more time managing tools than solving problems, connection erodes.

Human-centered organizations evaluate technology through the lens of experience outcomes: clarity, inclusion, and reduced cognitive load. Surveillance-driven metrics may promise control, but they undermine trust, which is the foundation of connection.

Case Study Two: Atlassian’s Intentional Distribution Model

Atlassian’s Team Anywhere strategy illustrates that connection is not dependent on proximity. By explicitly designing for asynchronous collaboration and redefining offices as collaboration destinations, the company avoided the hybrid trap of unequal experiences.

Clear documentation, transparent decision-making, and shared rituals ensured that employees remained aligned regardless of location. Atlassian’s success underscores a critical insight: connection is behavioral before it is spatial.

Inclusion as a Core Design Principle

Hybrid work amplifies inequities when inclusion is an afterthought. A connected workspace must be designed to support diverse working styles, abilities, and life circumstances. This includes equitable meeting practices, flexible schedules, and environments that support focus as well as interaction.

Inclusion is not achieved through statements or training alone. It is experienced daily through systems and behaviors. When people feel they belong, they contribute more fully.

Leaders as Stewards of Connection

Leadership in the connected workspace is less about supervision and more about stewardship. Leaders shape connection through how they communicate, how they listen, and how they respond to uncertainty. They must be willing to experiment and to treat the workplace as a prototype rather than a finished product.

The most effective leaders understand that connection is a competitive advantage. It fuels innovation, resilience, and trust.

Final Thoughts

The future of work will not be decided by floor plans or mandates. It will be shaped by organizations willing to design experiences that honor human needs while enabling high performance. The connected workspace is not a trend. It is the next evolution of how we work together.

Those who invest in connection will not just adapt to the future of work. They will help define it.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What defines a connected workspace?

A connected workspace intentionally integrates physical environments, digital tools, and cultural practices to support meaningful collaboration and inclusion.

2. Is a connected workspace the same as hybrid work?

No. Hybrid work describes where work happens, while a connected workspace focuses on how people experience work across locations.

3. What is the biggest risk in post-pandemic office design?

The biggest risk is recreating old office models without intentionally designing for connection, inclusion, and purpose.

4. What is the most common mistake companies make in hybrid work?

The biggest mistake is Proximity Bias. This occurs when leaders unconsciously favor employees who are physically present in the office with better assignments, more mentorship, and faster promotions. A true connected workspace must actively implement protocols to ensure visibility and equity for remote participants.

5. How can we maintain office culture when people are rarely together?

Culture is not created by free snacks or ping-pong tables; it is created by shared purpose and consistent communication. In a connected workspace, culture must be maintained through intentional digital rituals, transparent documentation, and “Deep Connection Days” where teams gather physically specifically for relationship building, not just routine tasks.

6. What technology is essential for a connected workspace?

Beyond standard video conferencing, the most essential tools are Persistent Digital Canvases (like Miro or Mural) and Asynchronous Communication Hubs (like Notion or Slack). These tools act as the “connective tissue” that holds projects together when people are working at different times and in different locations.

Image credit: Pixabay

Sign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

Fostering Innovation Across Physical and Digital Walls

Leave a reply

Leading the Hybrid Team

LAST UPDATED: December 13, 2025 at 10:09AM

Fostering Innovation Across Physical and Digital Walls

GUEST POST from Chateau G Pato

The innovation challenge in a hybrid world is not about technology; it’s about equity of collaboration. When some team members are physically together and others are virtual, a crucial information gap emerges. Those in the room benefit from body language, side conversations, and spontaneous moments—the very things that fuel informal innovation. Remote participants, however, often become second-class collaborators. This asymmetry kills the diverse thinking necessary for truly radical ideas. Hybrid leaders must address this proximity bias head-on.

In the framework of Human-Centered Innovation, we view the hybrid environment as a design problem. We are tasked with intentionally designing processes and utilizing tools to ensure that every participant—regardless of location—has an equal voice and equal access to information. We must unlearn the default reliance on impromptu, analog collaboration and replace it with structured, asynchronous digital processes that prioritize inclusion. The goal is to move from managing where people work to managing the quality of the collaboration they engage in.

The Three Pillars of Hybrid Innovation Leadership

To lead an innovative hybrid team, we must focus on three strategic areas:

1. The Doctrine of Digital-First Documentation

Innovation thrives on shared, persistent knowledge. In a hybrid setting, if an idea is discussed verbally in an office meeting room, it is effectively lost to the remote team when the meeting ends. The Digital-First Doctrine mandates that all work artifacts—brainstorming notes, idea sketches, mock-ups, and decision matrices—must live in a shared digital space (Miro, Figma, shared docs) that is accessible, editable, and visible to everyone, always. The physical whiteboard is dead; the digital canvas is the common ground.

Action: Leaders must insist that all meetings, even internal co-located ones, use a shared digital board as the single source of truth. If it isn’t documented digitally, it didn’t happen.

2. Intentionality in Serendipity and Spontaneity

The “water cooler moments” are where informal innovation often happens. You can’t replicate spontaneous encounters, but you can design for intentional serendipity. This involves allocating specific, non-work time for unstructured interaction.

Action: Schedule short, recurring “Idea Coffee Breaks” where participants are randomly assigned to small virtual breakout rooms with no agenda other than to discuss current projects or personal interests. Use a hybrid work day for “Deep Co-Creation Days” where co-located teams come in specifically to work on complex, generative tasks together, while remote teams join via high-quality video links optimized for collaborative tools.

3. The Principle of Time Zone and Asynchronous Equity

Hybrid teams often span time zones, making mandatory real-time meetings a productivity killer and a source of burnout. Asynchronous work — where teams collaborate over time rather than simultaneously—is the innovative advantage of the hybrid model.

Action: Shift the innovation pipeline to leverage asynchronous tools. For example, instead of a two-hour brainstorming session, implement a 24-hour Digital Brainstorm where team members contribute ideas over a full day in their preferred working window. Use short, recorded video updates instead of live status meetings, allowing teams to consume information when it is most convenient. This is the Human-Centered approach to global teamwork.

Case Study 1: Re-designing the Global Product Launch

Challenge: Staggered Innovation and Decision Paralysis in a Multi-National Hybrid Team

A global consumer electronics firm (“ConnectCorp”) needed to launch a new product line. Their teams were spread across three continents (US, EU, Asia) and were struggling with decision-making due to time zones and a reliance on US-centric, real-time meetings. Decisions made in the US often felt like directives to the Asian and European teams.

Hybrid Innovation Intervention: Asynchronous Decision Making

The innovation lead, embracing Human-Centered Innovation, introduced a “Decision Document” protocol. All key decisions were documented asynchronously (e.g., via a shared Notion or Confluence page) that clearly outlined:

The Context and Problem (1-page maximum).
The Options Considered and their data-backed pros/cons.
The Proposed Decision and the deadline for final input.

The Innovation Impact:

By forcing decisions into an asynchronous, digitally documented format, the team eliminated unnecessary meetings. The European and Asian teams had ample time to contribute thoughtful, written critiques before the decision was finalized. This change not only saved thousands of hours of meeting time but led to a 35% reduction in post-decision rework because regional insights were fully incorporated before launch. The process became more efficient, more transparent, and radically more inclusive.

Case Study 2: Designing the Inclusive Brainstorm

Challenge: Dominating Voices and Proximity Bias in Hybrid Brainstorming Sessions

A marketing agency (“IdeaForge”) found that in hybrid brainstorming sessions, the four or five people in the office consistently dominated the conversation, leaving the eight virtual participants as passive observers. The quality of idea generation suffered due to a lack of diversity.

Hybrid Innovation Intervention: Parallel Digital Brainwriting

The team adopted a strict protocol for all ideation sessions: the first 20 minutes were dedicated to Parallel Digital Brainwriting. All participants—local and remote—were required to submit their first five ideas silently and anonymously onto a shared digital canvas. No one was allowed to speak until all ideas were submitted.

This technique eliminated anchoring bias (where the first idea mentioned shapes all subsequent thinking) and proximity bias (where the loudest voice or the person closest to the facilitator wins).
The anonymous digital submission ensured introverted, virtual, and junior team members had equal input from the start.

The Innovation Impact:

The agency saw an immediate 40% increase in idea volume and a noticeable jump in the originality of the ideas generated. They successfully moved from an environment where innovation was an accidental performance (dominated by those physically present) to one where it was a structured, equitable process for every member, fully embodying the principles of Human-Centered Change.

Conclusion: Leadership Through Intentional Design

Leading the innovative hybrid team is a masterclass in organizational design. It is not about forcing people back into the office or simply tolerating remote work; it is about intentionally designing collaboration systems that overcome the physics of distance and the biases of proximity. The best hybrid leaders use the constraints of physical and digital walls to build stronger, more equitable processes. By adopting a Digital-First Doctrine, designing for intentional serendipity, and leveraging asynchronous equity, organizations can ensure that their innovation engine is powered by the talent of all their people, not just those who happen to share a common zip code. Innovation in the hybrid age is a conscious, inclusive act of design.

“If you want true innovation in a hybrid world, stop waiting for the hallway conversation and start designing the digital town square.”

Frequently Asked Questions About Hybrid Team Innovation

1. What is “proximity bias” and how does it kill hybrid innovation?

Proximity bias is the unconscious tendency to favor those who are physically closer to you (the manager). In a hybrid setting, this means co-located employees are often given more spontaneous access, better mentorship, and more visibility into key decisions, which starves remote teams of the crucial informal information needed for continuous innovation.

2. How does asynchronous work actually foster innovation, rather than slowing it down?

Asynchronous work fosters innovation by enabling deep work and reflection. Instead of being rushed into generating ideas live, team members have time to consume information, conduct research, and contribute high-quality, well-thought-out ideas when they are most focused. It trades the speed of live discussion for the depth and quality of measured contribution.

3. What single technology is most critical for an innovative hybrid team?

The most critical technology is the persistent, shared digital canvas (e.g., Miro, Mural, advanced shared docs). This tool acts as the central hub for all generative work—brainstorming, mapping, prototyping. It is the only way to ensure all team members, regardless of location, are working from the exact same, real-time visual information and have the ability to contribute equally.

Your first step toward hybrid innovation: Audit your last three brainstorming sessions. Document every idea and note, and then ask your remote participants to rate their perceived influence on the final outcome on a scale of 1-10. If the average rating is below 7, immediately implement the Parallel Digital Brainwriting technique for your next session.

Image credit: Pixabay

Sign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

What is in a Project Charter?

Leave a reply

What is in a Project Charter?

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

A project charter is an essential document used to define a project and ensure that all stakeholders are on the same page. It outlines the project’s purpose, goals, timelines, resources, and responsibilities, and serves as the foundation for successful project execution.

The most important element of a project charter is the scope. This section defines the scope of the project in terms of what will be done, the objectives to be achieved, and the deliverables expected. It also identifies any constraints or limitations that may affect the project.

The project charter also outlines the timeline and milestones for the project. This section lays out the start and end dates, as well as any major milestones, such as the completion of certain tasks or the delivery of specific deliverables.

The project charter also includes the roles and responsibilities of the stakeholders. This section outlines who is responsible for what, and who has authority over which decisions. It also defines the communication process between the stakeholders and outlines the decision-making process.

The resources section of the project charter lists the resources required to complete the project, such as personnel, materials, and equipment. It also outlines the budget for the project, including any costs associated with the resources.

Finally, the project charter includes the risks and assumptions associated with the project. This section identifies potential risks, such as changes in scope, resource constraints, or political changes, and outlines how they will be addressed. It also outlines any assumptions made during the project planning process.

A project charter is an important document that helps ensure that all stakeholders are on the same page and that the project is properly defined and managed. It outlines the scope, timeline, roles and responsibilities, resources, and risks and assumptions associated with the project, and serves as the foundation for successful project execution.

SPECIAL BONUS: You can get your very own copy of the Visual Project Charter™ for FREE for use as 35″x56″ giant poster or as a background to use in Miro, Mural, Lucidspark, Microsoft Whiteboard, Google Jamboard, etc. The Visual Project Charter™ was
created by Braden Kelley to help project managers set up their projects for greater success by beginning their project management efforts in a more visual, collaborative way.

The Visual Project Charter™ helps organizations:

Move beyond the Microsoft Word document
Make the creation of Project Charters more fun!
Kickoff projects in a more collaborative, more visual way
Structure dialogue to capture the project overview, project scope, project conditions and project approach

Image credit: Unsplash

Sign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

Scaling Design Thinking in the Enterprise

Leave a reply

From Workshops to Widespread Impact

LAST UPDATED: November 23, 2025 at 12:01PM

Scaling Design Thinking in the Enterprise

GUEST POST from Chateau G Pato

Design Thinking has become the lingua franca of modern innovation. Millions of employees globally have attended multi-day workshops, enthusiastically sticky-noted their way through empathy maps, and built rudimentary prototypes. However, for most large organizations, the enthusiasm generated in the workshop vanishes the moment employees return to their desks, colliding with entrenched silos, risk-averse processes, and a lack of executive sponsorship. The result is a common disappointment: brilliant workshops, minimal widespread impact.

The failure isn’t with Design Thinking itself; it’s with the Change Management Strategy used to scale it. We’ve treated it as a training problem when it is fundamentally a cultural and structural one. True competitive advantage comes not from having a few Design Thinking experts, but from embedding a Human-Centered Mindset into every department, from Finance to Operations, making it a routine part of daily decision-making.

Scaling Design Thinking requires a deliberate shift from the isolated “Workshop Model” to an integrated Enterprise Capability Model. It moves the focus from facilitating a methodology to engineering a culture that automatically prioritizes empathy, rapid iteration, and co-creation across all functions.

The Three Barriers to Scaling Design Thinking

Before scaling, leaders must dismantle the internal barriers that cause Design Thinking efforts to stall:

The “Innovation Theater” Trap: Treating Design Thinking as a visible, feel-good event (the workshop) rather than a rigorous, measurable business practice. This leads to team burnout when the fun activities don’t translate to real P&L impact.
The Skill Silo: Confining the practice to specific units (e.g., the Innovation Lab or UX team). When Design Thinking is seen as “someone else’s job,” functional areas like HR, Legal, or IT revert to old, process-first mindsets, resisting human-centered solutions.
The Hand-Off Hurdle: The most critical failure point is the transition from the Design Thinking team’s validated prototype (the idea) to the Operations team’s execution (the build). Without shared language and metrics, the hand-off is often rejected due to cultural dissonance as “too risky” or “not scalable.”

The Three Steps to Achieving Enterprise Capability

To move beyond these barriers, human-centered change leaders must implement a phased approach focusing on structural and cultural enablement:

1. Establish the Center of Gravity (The Design Guild)

Create a small, cross-functional internal community of practice, often called a Design Guild or Innovation Coaches Network. This group’s mission is not to run all the workshops, but to train, coach, and govern the practice across the enterprise. They codify the methodology, create standard, context-specific tools, and ensure consistency. Crucially, they serve as internal consultants, helping functional leaders translate a vague business challenge into a structured Design Thinking project that matters to their unit.

2. Integrate into Decision Metrics (Operationalizing Empathy)

The methodology must be linked directly to how the company measures and rewards behavior. This involves two actions:

First, mandate that Stage Gate Reviews for all major product, process, or system changes must include verifiable evidence of user empathy (e.g., ethnographic field notes, validated low-fidelity prototypes with customer feedback loops). Second, tie incentive and bonus programs for mid-level managers to demonstrating behavioral commitment to the methodology (e.g., actively allocating time for customer interviews, funding small-scale rapid prototyping). This ensures Design Thinking is a required part of the Process of Innovation, not just an optional tool.

3. Embed into Functional DNA (The T-Shaped Workforce)

This is the final, essential step: making Design Thinking part of every function’s core competency. Design Thinking shouldn’t be a separate skill but the horizontal bar of a T-Shaped Professional. For example, a Finance analyst should be trained not just in spreadsheets, but in how to apply Design Thinking to simplify employee expense reports. An HR leader should use Design Thinking to map the employee experience when on-boarding. This widespread application transforms the methodology from an innovation tool into a Operational Improvement Framework.

Case Study 1: The Global Manufacturer and the Core Capability

Challenge: Inconsistent Product Quality and Adoption Across Regions

A global manufacturer faced a problem common to large, successful firms: R&D invented great products, but regional operations adapted or rejected them, leading to inconsistent quality and slow market adoption. The issue wasn’t the product; it was a lack of shared empathy for the regional user’s context and constraints.

Scaling Design Thinking Intervention:

The manufacturer strategically abandoned the corporate-led workshop model and created a decentralized Design Mastery Program. Instead of bringing hundreds of employees to HQ, they identified one or two high-potential leaders in 20 different regions and certified them as Design Coaches (Step 1). These coaches were then required to dedicate 25% of their time to running local, problem-specific Design Sprints focused on regional adoption challenges (e.g., “Why is Product X adoption 40% lower in Asia than Europe?”).

Key Benefits and Characteristics:

Decentralized Ownership: Ownership shifted from a central lab to local operational leaders, integrating the methodology into the regional P&L (Step 3).
Metrics Integration: Success was measured by the regional reduction in operational friction (fewer reworks, faster local adaptation time) resulting from the Design Sprints (Step 2).
The Human-Centered Lesson: By making the coaches accountable to their regional P&L and focusing the sprints on operational pain points, Design Thinking quickly became indispensable, transforming from a “nice-to-have” training to a core operational capability driving tangible efficiency gains and better user adoption.

Case Study 2: The Healthcare Insurer and the Back Office

Challenge: Employee Churn and Administrative Cost in Claims Processing

A large healthcare insurer suffered from extremely high employee turnover in its claims processing centers, which drove high costs and error rates. Management assumed the problem was pay or management style, but the root cause was systemic complexity (the “internal user experience”). Design Thinking was initially only used on customer-facing digital tools.

Scaling Design Thinking Intervention:

The insurer created a dedicated Process Innovation Team led by internal Design Thinking coaches (Step 1). Their mandate was to apply the Design Thinking methodology not to the customer, but to the employee journey (the internal user). Teams from Legal, Compliance, and IT were forced to sit with claims processors and literally map their daily tasks, focusing on points of frustration (the internal user’s empathy map).

Key Benefits and Characteristics:

Horizontal Application: The methodology was applied horizontally across traditionally siloed functions (HR, IT, Legal), forcing them to co-create solutions focused on the processor’s experience (Step 3).
Metric Shift: The success metric was shifted from “Claims Processed per Hour” to “Reduction in Processor Frustration Score (PFS),” derived from employee feedback post-sprint (Step 2).
The Human-Centered Lesson: By applying the empathy phase to internal employees, the teams discovered complex legacy system hurdles that wasted 40% of the processors’ time. The solutions co-created by the teams led to a 35% reduction in employee churn in those centers within a year, demonstrating the massive ROI of applying Design Thinking to the internal user experience. Design Thinking became synonymous with operational excellence, not just product innovation.

The Human-Centered Call to Action

Design Thinking is too powerful to be confined to a single team or a one-off event. It is the necessary framework for continuous, human-centered change. To achieve widespread impact, leaders must recognize that they are not buying a training session; they are engineering a culture of pervasive empathy and experimentation.

The scaling challenge is not a logistical one, but a leadership one. Are you ready to shift resources and rewards to make this methodology a non-negotiable part of how every function, from the front line to the back office, makes decisions?

“If Design Thinking is isolated to the innovation lab, your company is only doing innovation theater. True innovation happens when empathy becomes a non-negotiable pursuit for the whole enterprise.” — Braden Kelley

Frequently Asked Questions About Scaling Design Thinking

1. What is the biggest mistake organizations make when trying to scale Design Thinking?

The biggest mistake is treating Design Thinking as purely a training problem (the “Workshop Model”) rather than a cultural and structural change management challenge. This leads to isolated enthusiasm that quickly fades when confronted with risk-averse processes and a lack of accountability in daily work.

2. What is the role of the “Design Guild” in scaling the methodology?

The Design Guild serves as the internal center of gravity. Its role is not to run every workshop, but to standardize the methodology, certify and coach internal practitioners across functions, and govern the quality of the practice, ensuring consistency and integration into strategic projects enterprise-wide.

3. How do you measure the impact of Design Thinking beyond product innovation?

Impact must be measured using operational metrics tied to the specific problem being solved. For back-office functions, this can include metrics like “Reduction in Employee Frustration Score,” “Decrease in Process Cycle Time,” “Reduction in Rework,” or “Time Saved on Cross-Functional Handoffs.” The key is measuring the reduction of friction for the user, whether internal or external.

Your first step toward scaling Design Thinking: Identify a high-impact, non-product challenge in a back-office function (e.g., HR on-boarding, finance expense reporting, legal compliance documentation). Partner with the leader of that function and commit to running one small, highly focused Design Sprint to address the internal user experience of that process. Focus the success metric on reducing internal employee friction, not saving cost. Use this success story to model Design Thinking as a powerful operational tool, not just an innovation toy.

Image credit: Pexels

Sign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

The Venture Client Model

Leave a reply

Bringing the Outside In for Internal Disruption

LAST UPDATED: November 13, 2025 at 1:23PM
The Venture Client Model

GUEST POST from Chateau G Pato

For decades, large corporations have wrestled with a critical innovation problem: how to access the speed and agility of the startup ecosystem without choking it with bureaucracy or overpaying through premature acquisition. Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) offered a financial window, but often failed to translate investment into operational change. The solution is not more capital; it’s a new engagement model built on a human-centered relationship: the Venture Client Model.

The Venture Client Model transforms the relationship between the corporation and the startup. Instead of acting as a passive investor, the large company acts as a first, paying client — a crucial lighthouse customer. The startup receives a contract (not just equity) and the opportunity to pilot its technology within a real, complex industrial environment. The corporation, in turn, gains early, de-risked access to disruptive solutions and the ability to test future technologies for internal applications.

This model is inherently human-centered because it focuses on solving real, internal pain points with external ingenuity, forcing a necessary friction between established internal process and external disruptive speed. It moves innovation from the periphery of financial investment directly into the core of operational value creation, where change truly impacts the customer and the bottom line.

The Three Pillars of the Venture Client Advantage

The success of the Venture Client Model hinges on its unique structure, which addresses the primary failures of traditional internal R&D and CVC:

1. De-Risked Operational Access (The Speed Multiplier)

Traditional procurement processes are an innovation killer. They are designed for stability, not speed. The Venture Client Unit (VCU) operates with its own streamlined legal and commercial framework, allowing for the rapid deployment of proof-of-concept projects. This structure allows a startup solution to enter the corporate environment in weeks, not months, dramatically accelerating the time-to-value.

2. Focused Pain Point Sourcing (The Value Anchor)

Unlike traditional CVC, which often chases market hype, the VCU starts by rigorously identifying the top five systemic pain points within the parent organization (e.g., slow supply chain traceability, high energy consumption in a factory). They then source startups specifically to solve those problems. This ensures that every pilot project is anchored to an immediate, quantifiable operational return, overcoming internal resistance by delivering proven, tangible value right away.

3. Internal Cultural Catalyst (The Mindset Shift)

The most profound impact of the Venture Client Model is internal. When a lean, external solution fixes a multi-million-dollar internal process in six weeks, it creates a powerful cultural catalyst. It shows internal teams what is possible outside the traditional, risk-averse framework, directly increasing the Adaptability Quotient (AQ) of the workforce. It changes the mindset from “we can’t do that” to “who outside can help us do this?”

Case Study 1: The Automotive OEM and Process Optimization

Challenge: Inefficient Factory Floor Logistics

A major European automotive manufacturer was suffering from production bottlenecks due to outdated manual logistics tracking on its assembly lines. Traditional internal R&D struggled to find a quick, cost-effective solution that could integrate with decades-old legacy systems. The internal solution required a full-scale IT overhaul, demanding years and hundreds of millions.

Venture Client Intervention:

The manufacturer’s VCU identified a small startup specializing in computer vision-based inventory tracking. Within a specialized procurement sandbox, the VCU ran a three-month pilot. The startup’s off-the-shelf software was integrated with existing CCTV infrastructure to track component flow automatically. The result was a 15% reduction in assembly-line bottlenecks and an immediate, visible ROI. The manufacturer then scaled the solution across five factories within the next year.

The Human-Centered Lesson:

The success was not just technological; it was methodological. The Venture Client process forced internal operations teams to collaborate with a nimble external party on a real, immediate problem, breaking down “Not Invented Here” bias and proving the viability of external solutions.

The Crucial Distinction: Client vs. Investor

The Venture Client is fundamentally different from Corporate Venture Capital (CVC). CVC focuses on a financial return in 5-7 years, often funding startups outside the corporation’s direct operational sphere. The Venture Client focuses on an operational return in 6-12 months. The contract is for a product or service (not equity), though VCU often has an option for future equity if the pilot is successful. This immediate operational focus ensures that the initiative remains aligned with core business needs, securing necessary internal sponsorship.

Case Study 2: The Infrastructure Firm and Predictive Maintenance

Challenge: Reactive Maintenance in Remote Infrastructure

A global energy infrastructure firm maintained thousands of remote assets (pipelines, wind farms) and relied on scheduled or reactive maintenance, leading to costly downtime and emergency fixes. The internal data science team was too small and too focused on existing predictive models to develop a radically new solution.

Venture Client Intervention:

The VCU scouted a specialized startup utilizing acoustic sensing and advanced machine learning to detect micro-leaks and component wear in real-time, long before traditional vibration sensors flagged an issue. The firm acted as the first commercial client, providing the startup with critical, large-scale training data from their assets. The pilot demonstrated an increase in lead time for critical fixes by three weeks. The firm then moved from a pilot contract to a large-scale, multi-year vendor contract, securing a strategic advantage in predictive asset management.

The Human-Centered Lesson:

This highlights the mutual value exchange. The corporation gained a strategic, proprietary solution and validated a technology stream. The startup gained a massive, credible reference customer and the data necessary to rapidly mature its AI model. It’s a win-win built on the human-centered need for speed (startup) and stability (corporation).

Conclusion: Scaling External Ingenuity

The Venture Client Model is the ultimate tool for scaling external ingenuity for internal disruption. It turns the largest corporate asset — its scale, its budget, and its pain points — into a magnet for innovation. By establishing a dedicated, de-risked commercial channel, corporations can access game-changing technologies on their own terms, transforming innovation from a high-stakes financial bet into a continuous portfolio of strategic pilots that accelerate organizational learning.

“Stop waiting for the big acquisition to disrupt your business. Start paying the right startups to solve your most urgent problems today. That is the Venture Client Model.” — Braden Kelley

Your first step toward building a Venture Client capability: Identify the single biggest operational bottleneck in your organization that costs over $5 million annually, and commit to finding an external startup solution to pilot it within 90 days.

Image credit: Pexels

Sign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

Every Company Needs an Innovation Coach

1 Reply

Retained Innovation Innovation is not a solo activity. While the rare lone genius may be able to invent something on their own (although still always inspired by others), nobody can innovate by themselves. Innovation, by its very nature, requires collaboration.

Companies are like brains. The brain is composed of two hemispheres. The left brain is typically described as the home to math and logic skills, while the right brain is described as the domain of creativity. Of course people need to develop both hemispheres to be successful, and companies are the same. Achieving operational excellence is the goal of the left brain side of the organization and innovation excellence should be the goal of the right side of the organization. Unfortunately, most organizations over-invest in operational excellence to the point that the organization fights off innovation excellence efforts like a virus.

So, what’s the cure?

Not to get sick in the first place of course!

To achieve that, consider putting an innovation wellness program in place. And what does that look like?

An innovation wellness program has at its center, an organization that is willing to reach outside its four walls for a constant stream of new inspiration. Because it is inspiration in combination with curiosity that will give the organization a fighting chance of identifying ongoing sources of unique and differentiated insights that will allow the organization to continuously reinvent itself and stay in resonance with its customers.

A couple tangible examples of innovation wellness program components include:

Embedding elements of so-called Open Innovation into the core of the organization’s innovation approach rather than existing as a periodic guest

Continuous reinforcement of a curiosity culture

Employment of a part-time innovation coach on an ongoing basis

Robert F Brands What does an innovation coach look like?

Well, one good example was the late Robert F. Brands, who was lost to the global innovation community far too soon. He was a friend, a colleague, a mentor, a partner on work we did for the United States Navy, and he helped me get the book deal for my first five-star book – Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire.

A good innovation coach helps you avoid the ten signs of innovation sickness:

Nobody can articulate your definition of innovation (or you don’t have one)
Nobody can articulate your innovation vision/strategy/goals (or you don’t have them)
People struggle to tell the story of one or more innovations launched to wide adoption by the organization
Most of what passes as innovation inside the organization would actually be classified as improvements (not innovation) by people outside the organization
The organization no longer makes external innovation perspectives available to a wide audience
Nobody takes the time to participate in our innovation efforts anymore
Your organization is unable to accept insights and ideas from outside the organization and develop them into concepts that can be scaled to wide adoption
Innovation program leadership has difficulty getting time on the CEO’s calendar any more
Your innovation team is trying to do all of the innovating instead of helping to accelerate the innovation efforts of others
Your pace of innovation is slower than the organizations you compete with for market share, donations, votes, etc.

A good innovation coach can help you:

1. Perform an innovation assessment

I developed a 50 question innovation audit and made it available in support of my first book Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire, so that people can do a self-evaluation of their innovation maturity here on my web site. Or if you would like to dig a little deeper into the dynamics of innovation in your organization, I can work with you to do an innovation diagnostic across your organization and/or help you establish a baseline so you can track your innovation maturity progress over time.

2. Establish a Continuous Innovation Infrastructure

Many companies confuse having a New Product Development (NPD) program or a Research & Development (R&D) program with having an innovation program, or are stuck in an ‘innovation as a project’ approach to innovation. A good innovation coach can help you define what innovation can and should mean to your organization, build a common language of innovation, create an innovation vision, establish an innovation strategy that dovetails with your organization’s overall strategy, and develop innovation goals that will help focus the organization’s efforts to realize its innovation vision and strategy.

3. Teach You Some New Innovation Tools, Methods, and Frameworks

A good innovation coach is also a skilled facilitator and can help facilitate innovation off-sites, an effective trainer who can develop the custom courses you need to teach people in the organization new tools, methods, or frameworks to improve or accelerate your innovation capabilities, and is capable of delivering inspirational keynotes to large groups inside your organization to help shift mindsets and help people feel empowered to participate in the innovation efforts of the organization. The best innovation coaches are capable not just of bringing in the tools, methods and frameworks of others, but are also capable of understanding your innovation gaps and creating new innovation tools, methods and frameworks to help you.

4. Help You Identify Insights and Opportunities

Innovation begins with inspiration, and your curiosity and exploration should lead you to identify some good insights to build on and opportunities to pursue. But, because most ideas are really idea fragments, sometimes an innovation coach or other external perspectives can help you identify the gaps in your idea fragment or opportunity identification that might make them more compelling, especially if you aren’t making a conscious use of The Nine Innovation Roles as part of your innovation process to help you avoid innovation blind spots. A good innovation coach can also help you go beyond ideas and help you focus on not just one, but all three keys to innovation success:

Value Creation
Value Access
Value Translation

Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire will help you learn more about each, or you can check out my previous article ‘Innovation is All About Value‘.

5. Tell You Honestly When You’re Going Off Course

A good innovation coach will have the courage to be honest with you and tell you when you’ve lost your way. Over time, many innovation teams tend to come down with shiny object syndrome or its equally evil cousin, launch fever. A competent innovation coach will be able to recognize the change and help you course correct before you pass the point of no return, and put the very existence of your innovation program at risk. A good innovation coach is able to provide a consistent external perspective, a sanity check, and may be able to also help you build external connections to invite in other external perspectives as well.

Wrapping it Up

It is easy to fall in love with the innovation process and program you’ve created. It is equally simple to form attachments to your innovation projects and artifacts and think that you’ve cracked the code, and maybe you have, but wouldn’t you like to keep one toe in the pond outside your organization just to make sure?

Creating and maintaining a part-time relationship with an innovation coach you trust is a great way to do that. Smart organizations keep a pulse on their level of innovation maturity over time. They’re continuously evolving their innovation infrastructure, building new capabilities, and seeking out external perspectives as a sanity check on their program evolutions over time. So what are you waiting for?