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10 Innovation Roles Every Enterprise Needs

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(That Aren’t “Chief Innovation Officer”)

10 Innovation Roles Every Enterprise Needs

by Art Inteligencia

What Innovation Roles Does an Enterprise Need Besides a CINO? (Short Answer)

Ten innovation roles every enterprise needs that aren’t “Chief Innovation Officer”: (1) Problem Framer, (2) Insight Partner, (3) Experiment Designer, (4) Sponsor with Levers, (5) Journey / Adoption Owner, (6) Kill Steward, (7) Transfer Operator, (8) Portfolio Steward, (9) Work Redesign Partner, and (10) Value Truth-Teller. You can keep a CINO as an orchestrator. You still need these jobs done — full-time, part-time, or embedded — or innovation stays a press release.

A Chief Innovation Officer can sponsor the system. They cannot be the system — contact, mandate, adoption, kill, transfer, and truth-telling have to live somewhere real.

Why Can’t One CINO Title Carry the Landing?

I keep watching enterprises hunt for a hero title — Chief Innovation Officer, Head of Disruption, lab leader with a better LinkedIn headline — as if one chair could substitute for contact with customers, sponsors with levers, adoption after applause, and the courage to kill a weak bet. Soft landings don’t work that way.

Innovation is a team sport. These ten roles can sit inside existing jobs. If nobody owns them, you get theater with a logo. For the costume patterns that fill the gap, see 7 Types of Innovation Theater.

Role Owns Costume
1. Problem Framer Human problem and stakes Solution spam with no owner
2. Insight Partner Lived contact evidence Synthetic personas
3. Experiment Designer Falsifiable behavior tests Demo day as destination
4. Sponsor with Levers Mandate to change the system Logo sponsorship
5. Journey / Adoption Owner BAU path after applause “Innovation owns it” forever
6. Kill Steward Honorable stop criteria Endless “still exploring”
7. Transfer Operator Industrialize into ops “Scale later”
8. Portfolio Steward Mix, capacity, stop/start Every pet project is “strategic”
9. Work Redesign Partner Jobs and decision rights with tech Tools bolted onto broken work
10. Value Truth-Teller Outcomes over vanity metrics Idea count / maturity theater

1. What Does a Problem Framer Own?

Owns: The human problem, constraints, and stakes in language the enterprise can fund.

Costume: Instant roadmaps and “AI opportunities” with no problem owner.

Why needed: Faster wrong is still wrong. Framing is the scarce skill.

Good looks like: One crisp problem statement with a named sponsor before experiments scale.

2. Why Does Every Enterprise Need an Insight Partner?

Owns: Field evidence — customers, employees, partners — jobs, friction, dignity costs.

Costume: Generated personas, scraped reviews, empathy maps nobody met.

Why needed: Innovation without contact is decoration at higher RPM.

Good looks like: Evidence that could not have been invented in the building.

3. What Does an Experiment Designer Do That Demos Don’t?

Owns: The smallest test that can prove or kill a named behavior hypothesis.

Costume: Demo day as destination; portfolio pieces that teach nothing.

Why needed: Learning requires kill criteria and instrumentation — not sticky-note volume.

Good looks like: Clear go/no-go evidence tied to what humans do. Before you fund the bet, run 11 Questions Before Funding Any Innovation Pilot.

5. Why Does a Journey / Adoption Owner Matter After Applause?

Owns: Operating path, handoffs, incentives, and success for the median user in BAU.

Costume: “Innovation owns it” forever; dual-running with no kill date for the old way.

Why needed: Demos without owners become pilot purgatory.

Good looks like: Named workflow owner before the next demo. When labs become destinations instead of vehicles, see 5 Reasons Innovation Labs Fail — and 5 Replacements That Work.

6. What Does a Kill Steward Protect?

Owns: Kill criteria, the courage to use them, and a cemetery of learning that isn’t shame.

Costume: Endless “still exploring”; nobody rewarded for stopping.

Why needed: Without honorable kills, the portfolio fills with zombies and tourism.

Good looks like: Time box + evidence threshold + named stopper.

7. Why Is Transfer Operator a Role — Not a Phase Called “Later”?

Owns: Industrialization — training ops, retiring shadow process, scaling beyond the A-team.

Costume: “Scale later”; the lab keeps the baby; the core never asked.

Why needed: Insight without transfer is a forever prototype.

Good looks like: Transfer plan and BAU operator named before build.

8. What Does a Portfolio Steward Own That Initiative Lists Don’t?

Owns: Visible bet mix, stop/start honesty, and protection of change capacity.

Costume: Every leader’s pet project is “strategic innovation.”

Why needed: Overload turns innovation into extraction of human attention.

Good looks like: What we will not fund this quarter sits beside what we will.

9. Why Does Every Enterprise Need a Work Redesign Partner?

Owns: Job design, decision rights, and deep-work policy beside new tools.

Costume: Copilots bolted onto broken process; denser busyness called innovation.

Why needed: Soft landings require redesigned work, not only faster drafts.

Good looks like: The tech investment case includes redesign line items and owners. For the designed split of human and machine work, see The AI Soft Landing.

10. What Does a Value Truth-Teller Refuse to Let Close the Review?

Owns: The scoreboard — adopted behavior, value captured, transfer, kill rate — and the refusal to let vanity close the review.

Costume: Ideas logged, hackathons held, “innovation NPS,” AI maturity slides.

Why needed: What gets measured gets funded. Activity metrics fund costume.

Good looks like: Outcomes decide funding and promotion; activity informs. For the catalog, see 12 Metrics That Actually Measure Innovation Value.

How Do You Check Innovation Role Coverage Before the Next Org Redesign?

Before the next innovation org redesign, run five go/no-go questions:

  1. Who frames the problem — and can they kill a wrong brief?
  2. Who has lived contact this month?
  3. Who holds levers, not a logo?
  4. Who owns adoption and transfer after applause?
  5. Who is rewarded for honorable kills and outcome truth — not only launches?

Keep the CINO if you want an orchestrator. Staff the ten roles if you want a landing.

Frequently Asked Questions

What innovation roles does an enterprise need?

Enterprises need role coverage for problem framing, lived insight, experiment design, sponsors with levers, journey/adoption ownership, kill stewardship, transfer into BAU, portfolio capacity, work redesign beside technology, and value truth-telling. Those jobs can be full-time, part-time, or embedded — with or without a Chief Innovation Officer.

Do you need a Chief Innovation Officer?

You may want a Chief Innovation Officer as an orchestrator and sponsor of the system. You still need the ten roles that carry contact, mandate, adoption, kill, transfer, portfolio honesty, work redesign, and outcome truth. A CINO title cannot substitute for that coverage.

How do you structure an innovation team?

Structure an innovation team around role coverage, not a single hero title: who frames problems, who gathers lived evidence, who designs falsifiable experiments, who holds levers, who owns adoption and transfer, who kills weak bets, who stewards portfolio capacity, who redesigns work, and who tells the truth about value. Embed those roles next to journeys — not only in a lab.

What roles prevent innovation theater?

Roles that prevent innovation theater include sponsors with real levers, insight partners with lived contact, experiment designers with kill criteria, adoption and transfer owners after applause, portfolio stewards who stop pet projects, work redesign partners beside tools, and value truth-tellers who refuse vanity metrics as proof of impact.

What is the difference between an innovation role and a lab?

A lab is a place or vehicle. An innovation role is ownership of a job that must get done for bets to land — framing, contact, experiments, mandate, adoption, kill, transfer, portfolio, redesign, or truth-telling. Labs fail when they become destinations; roles succeed when they are embedded with decision rights and a path into BAU.

Image credits: Unsplash

Content Authenticity Statement: The topic area, key elements to focus on, etc. were decisions made by Braden Kelley, with a little help from Google Gemini and Cursor to clean up the article, add images and create infographics.

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Creating Effective Digital Teams

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Creating Effective Digital Teams

GUEST POST from Howard Tiersky

Creating digital products is a multi-disciplinary process, blending creativity, engineering, strategy, customer support, legal regulations and more. How to structure their teams is a major challenge faced by large enterprises and global brands undergoing a digital transformation. Specifically, they need to answer the following three questions:

  1. What’s the optimal way to organize the necessary roles and responsibilities?
  2. Which part of the organization should own each capability?
  3. How do we get everyone working together?

The optimal structure for digital teams varies across different organizations. At FROM, we use a base framework that identifies fifteen key roles or competencies that are part of creating and operating most digital properties. Those roles are divided into three conceptual teams: the Digital Business Team, the Digital Technology Team, and the Extended Business Team.

The Digital Business Team

  1. Digital Business Vision Owner: The Business Vision Owner defines the key business measures and objectives for the digital property, including target market segments and their objectives. This “visioneer” makes final decisions on product direction.
  2. Product Management: Product Management owns the product on a day-to-day basis, and liaises with other areas to make sure the digital value proposition is realized. They’re responsible for commissioning and reviewing customer research to develop and maintain the product roadmap in terms of the business vision and can prioritize the backlog of changes and improvements.
  3. Program Management: Distinct from the Product Manager, the Program Manager is responsible for owning the long-term plan to achieve the product roadmap, including budgets and resource allocations, and for maintaining the release schedule.
  4. User Interface/User Experience: UI/UX is responsible for the overall look and feel of the digital product. They develop and maintain UI standards to be used as the product is developed, are involved in user testing, and QA new releases.
  5. Content Development: Content Development creates non-campaign and non-marketing or editorial content for the site, including articles, instructions, and FAQ or helps content. Their job is to create content that’s easy to understand and consistent with the brand or voice of the product or site.

The Digital Technology Team

  1. Front End Development: Front End Development selects frameworks and defines front-end coding standards for any technologies that will be used. They’re also responsible for writing code that will execute in the browser, such as HTML, HTML5, JavaScript, and mobile code (e.g., Objective-C.) Front End Development drives requirements for back-end development teams, to ensure the full user experience can be implemented.
  2. Back End Development: Back End Development manages core enterprise systems, including inventory, financial, and CRM. They’re responsible for exposing, as web services, the capabilities that are needed for front-end development. They’re responsible for developing and enforcing standards to protect the integrity of those enterprise systems, as well as reviewing requests for and implementing new capabilities.
  3. Data: Data develops and maintains enterprise and digital specific data models, managing data, and creating and maintaining plans for data management and warehousing. They monitor the health of databases, expose services for data access, and manage data architecture.
  4. Infrastructure: Infrastructure maintains the physical hardware used for applications and data. They maintain disaster and business continuity programs and monitor the scalability and reliability of the physical infrastructure. They also monitor and proactively manage the security of the infrastructure environment.
  5. Quality Assurance: Quality Assurance creates and maintains QA standards for code in production, develops automated and manual test scripts, and executes any integration, browser, or performance testing scenarios. They also monitor site metrics to identify problems proactively. (It should be noted that, though you want dedicated QA professionals on your team, QA is everyone’s responsibility!)

The Extended Business Team

  1. Marketing: Marketing is responsible for some key digital operations. They develop offers and campaigns to drive traffic. They manage email lists and execution and manage and maintain the CRM system.
  2. Product and Pricing: Product and Pricing responsibility can vary, depending on industry and type of digital property. When appropriate, they develop, license or merchandise anything sold on the site. They set pricing and drive requirements for aligning digital features with any new products based on those product’s parameters.
  3. Operations: Operations is responsible for fulfillment of the value proposition. For commerce sites, for example, this includes picking, packing and shipping orders. For something like a digital video aggregation site, responsibilities include finding, vetting and uploading new video content.
  4. Business Development: Business Development is focused on creating partnerships that increase traffic and sales, or find new streams of revenue.
  5. Customer Support: Customer support is responsible for maintaining knowledge of digital platforms, policies, and known issues and solutions. They assist customers with problems and questions and track customer interactions to report on trends and satisfaction levels.

How these teams and the roles within them fit together varies from company to company. However, it’s good practice to review this model to see, first, if you have these key roles represented in your organization. Then, make sure to create well-defined responsibilities and processes, and finally, look at how they function together, to see if they’re organized in the most effective manner. If your Digital Business, Digital Technology, and Extended Business teams are in sync, all your projects will benefit.

This article originally appeared on the Howard Tiersky blog
Image Credits: Pixabay

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What Change Roles Are Missing?

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What Change Roles Are Missing?

I’m gearing up to write a new app and book on organizational change to complement a powerful new visual change toolkit that will be incredibly useful for use in change programs, project and portfolio management, and even innovation, and so I’m canvasing the organizational change literature space (including change leadership, change management, and business transformation) and looking to identify:

  1. The best organizational change thought leaders
  2. The most powerful organizational change frameworks
  3. The most useful organizational change tools
  4. The best organizational change books (including change leadership, change management, and business transformation)

Please contact me to tell me your favorites or add below in the comments.

I will be launching a new community and information site soon to launch this visual change toolkit free to the world, in an extremely collaborative way. Which is why I’m looking for your thoughts on the four items above. Once the skeleton site is up in the next week or so, people will also be able to submit their suggestions on the site.

But in the meantime, based on the success of the Nine Innovation Roles from my last book Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire and some ideas that have been triggered by the work I’ve done in various workshops with organizations around the world with the Nine Innovation Roles, I’ve decided to identify a similar set of roles that people should make sure are occupied on their guiding coalitions.

And as I look at the Nine Innovation Roles there are a few that are still applicable in a broader change context (after all, Innovation Is All About Change). Here are the ones that I believe still are necessary in an organizational change program:

1. Revolutionary

The Revolutionary is the person who is always eager to change things, to shake them up, and to share his or her opinion. These people are uncomfortable standing still and not shy about sharing their opinions. Often they see the status quo as not good enough, so the Revolutionary wants to change it.

2. Architect

Change doesn’t emerge from a vacuum. Someone has to see the bigger picture, bring the idea fragments together and create a cohesive change program, a new business architecture, and guide people to create a collection of project artifacts to help guide the change effort. This is the role of the Architect.

3. Artist

The Artist doesn’t seek change like the Revolutionary or see the big picture like the Architect, but Artists are really good at evolving the seeds of change, shaping them, watering them, and ultimately making the impetus for change more clear, the benefits more compelling, and the change plan more complete.

4. Barrier Buster

Every change effort should identify several potential barriers to change, and the team must identify ways to overcome them before the change program is ready to be communicated to the masses. This is where the Barrier Buster comes in. Barrier Busters love solving tough problems and often have the deep domain knowledge or the deep insight into the change target’s mindset necessary to move minds and resources to support the change program.

5. Connector

The Connector does just that. These people hear a Revolutionary say something interesting and put him together with an Architect and an Evangelist; The Connector listens to the Artist and knows exactly where to find the Barrier Buster that the change effort needs.

6. Lion Tamer

The Lion Tamer is really good at identifying risks, potential negative outcomes, and the steps necessary to implement a change. Lion Tamers take the unwieldy beast that any change program can easily become, tame it, help break it down into digestible chunks, and make it real. These are the people who can picture how the change is going to be made and line up the right resources to make it happen.

7. Evangelist

The Evangelists know how to educate people on what the change is and help them understand it. Evangelists are great people to help attract guiding coalition members and to build support for a change effort among leadership. Evangelists also are great at both evangelizing on behalf of customers, employees and partners, but also in helping to educate customers, employees, and partners on the value of the change effort.

8. INSERT YOUR SUGGESTION HERE

9. INSERT YOUR SUGGESTION HERE

So, that’s only a first cut at a set of Change Roles that must be filled on the guiding coalition or the change program team.

What roles are missing?

Are there any there that are not needed or redundant?

Please sound off in the comments below.


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Partners Wanted – Taking Nine Innovation Roles Global

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Partners Wanted - Taking Nine Innovation Roles Global I was in Boston, MA last week for the Front End of Innovation conference and had the opportunity to train dozens of potential corporate Nine Innovation Roles trainers as part of my quest to set the Nine Innovation Roles free and make this powerful tool available for people to use to improve the effectiveness of their innovation teams and the overall innovation capability of the organization.

Now it is time for the next step, to train other service providers from all around the world on the Nine Innovation Roles so they can use it with their customers.

Already, we have a Spanish language version of the cards and resources in process.

For interested service providers, there are only a few small requirements for becoming a Nine Innovation Roles training partner:

  1. Translate this page on my site (see Spanish example) – will publish and give translation credit with 1-2 links to first translator of each language
  2. Translate this page on my web site – will publish and give translation credit with 1-2 links to first translator of each language
  3. #1 and #2 will allow me to get a translated version of the Nine Innovation Roles cards design created for you
  4. Translate the Nine Innovation Roles presentation embedded in #1 (can leverage #1)
  5. Translate the Nine Innovation Roles worksheet I link to in #1 (can leverage #1)
  6. Attend an inexpensive Nine Innovation Roles train the trainer webinar that I will be holding soon.

To register your interest in becoming a Nine Innovation Roles training partner please fill out the contact form and make a note in the question field.


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The Nine Innovation Roles

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I’m seeing an increasing number of articles about innovation personalities and the like, and I’m a firm believer that it’s not personalities that matter so much when it comes to innovation, it’s the roles that we play in making innovation happen (or not). So, I would like to add my Nine Innovation Roles to the conversation.

The Nine Innovation RolesThe following is an excerpt from my book Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire:

Too often we treat people as commodities that are interchangeable and maintain the same characteristics and aptitudes. Of course, we know that people are not interchangeable, yet we continually pretend that they are anyway — to make life simpler for our reptile brain to comprehend. Deep down we know that people have different passions, skills, and potential, but even when it comes to innovation, we expect everybody to have good ideas.

I’m of the opinion that all people are creative, in their own way. That is not to say that all people are creative in the sense that every single person is good at creating lots of really great ideas, nor do they have to be. I believe instead that everyone has a dominant innovation role at which they excel, and that when properly identified and channeled, the organization stands to maximize its innovation capacity. I believe that all people excel at one of nine innovation roles, and that when organizations put the right people in the right innovation roles, that your innovation speed and capacity will increase.

Here are The Nine Innovation Roles:

1. Revolutionary

  • The Revolutionary is the person who is always eager to change things, to shake them up, and to share his or her opinion. These people tend to have a lot of great ideas and are not shy about sharing them. They are likely to contribute 80 to 90 percent of your ideas in open scenarios.

2. Conscript

  • The Conscript has a lot of great ideas but doesn’t willingly share them, either because such people don’t know anyone is looking for ideas, don’t know how to express their ideas, prefer to keep their head down and execute, or all three.

3. Connector

  • The Connector does just that. These people hear a Conscript say something interesting and put him together with a Revolutionary; The Connector listens to the Artist and knows exactly where to find the Troubleshooter that his idea needs.

4. Artist

  • The Artist doesn’t always come up with great ideas, but artists are really good at making them better.

5. Customer Champion

  • The Customer Champion may live on the edge of the organization. Not only does he have constant contact with the customer, but he also understands their needs, is familiar with their actions and behaviors, and is as close as you can get to interviewing a real customer about a nascent idea.

6. Troubleshooter

  • Every great idea has at least one or two major roadblocks to overcome before the idea is ready to be judged or before its magic can be made. This is where the Troubleshooter comes in. Troubleshooters love tough problems and often have the deep knowledge or expertise to help solve them.

7. Judge

  • The Judge is really good at determining what can be made profitably and what will be successful in the marketplace.

8. Magic Maker

  • The Magic Maker takes an idea and makes it real. These are the people who can picture how something is going to be made and line up the right resources to make it happen.

9. Evangelist

  • The Evangelist knows how to educate people on what the idea is and help them understand it. Evangelists are great people to help build support for an idea internally, and also to help educate customers on its value.

As you can see, creating and maintaining a healthy innovation portfolio requires that you develop the organizational capability of identifying what role each individual is best at playing in your organization. It should be obvious that a failure to involve and leverage all nine roles along the idea generation, idea evaluation, and idea commercialization path will lead to suboptimal results. To be truly successful, you must be able to bring in the right roles at the right times to make your promising ideas stronger on your way to making them successful. Most organizations focus too much energy on generating the ideas and not enough on developing their ideas or their people.

If you would prefer, here is a slide deck that I posted to slideshare.net:

The Nine Innovation Roles

Action Items

  1. Download the simple Nine Innovation Roles Worksheet from my FREE STUFF page and use it in your groups to help understand what innovation roles people tend towards and which ones are underrepresented.

  2. Do you believe these are the roles that drive successful innovation? If not, why not.

  3. Book a Nine Innovation Roles Group Diagnostic Workshop

  4. This is just an excerpt. Please check out the whole book.

Sound off in the comments below.

Book a Nine Innovation Roles Group Diagnostic Workshop

Download the PDF version of the Nine Innovation Roles:

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Innovation Can Come From Anyone

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Innovation Can Come From Anyone“Innovation can come from anyone, but it is required from everyone for an organization to remain successful.”

Or taken another way:

“Innovation can come from anywhere, but you must be looking everywhere to find it.”

Innovation comes from good listening, observing, watching, waiting, connecting, and synthesizing.

Innovation comes from the creation of a unique, differentiated customer insight that you can build your ideation, your experimentation, your collaboration, and your commercialization efforts around. The goal of course is to turn that unique, differentiated insight into solutions valued above every existing alternative. Solutions that not only create value, but that you also stand ready and able to help people access and understand the need for and relevance in their life.

It is because innovation can come from anywhere and can involve everyone in the organization in making innovation happen that I created The Nine Innovation Roles and my innovation value framework, to help people make sense of what is necessary to make innovation successful as they form their innovation project teams and process, and to give people a simple framework to hold close as they think about creating innovation success.

I hope you’ll check out both of these and let me know what you think!

Build a Common Language of Innovation

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