Steve Clean The Three Pillars of World-class Company Innovation

Posted on by steve clean

My good good friend Alexander Osterwalder, the inventor of the business model canvas (one in every of foundations of the Lean Methodology) has written a playbook (alongside along with his affiliate associate Tendayi Viki,) From Innovation Theater to Growth Engine to elucidate easy methods to construct and implement repeatable innovation processes inside an organization. 

Right here’s their introduction to the important thing ideas contained in the playbook.


Over 75% of executives report that innovation is a high three precedence at their firms. Nonetheless, only 20% of executives point out that their firms are able to innovate at scale. That is the problem for up to date organizations: Find out how to develop a world-class ecosystem that may drive repeatable innovation at scale.

The playbook describes the three pillars of company innovation: Innovation Portfolios, Innovation Applications and a Tradition of Innovation. Beneath every pillar, the playbook describes three questions that leaders and groups can ask to judge whether or not their firm has the best innovation ecosystem in place.

Innovation Portfolio: what are your organization’s portfolio of innovation initiatives?

  • Are your organization’s innovation efforts exploring or exploiting enterprise modes?
  • Does your organization have a balanced portfolio of initiatives that cowl effectivity, sustaining and transformative innovation?
  • What’s the well being of your innovation funnel or pipeline?

Discover: Seek for new worth propositions and enterprise fashions by designing and testing new enterprise concepts fairly than execution. 

Exploit: Handle present enterprise fashions by scaling rising companies, renovating declining ones and defending the profitable ones.


Innovation Applications: how are your organization’s innovation packages are structured and managed.

  • Do your leaders get excited concerning the mistaken innovation packages?
  • What outcomes are your innovation packages producing?
  • Are your organization’s innovation packages interconnected in a strategic approach?

To shut the innovation functionality hole, firms can consider their innovation packages by asking whether or not they’reinnovation theater or producing tangible outcomes for the corporate.

  • Worth Creation: Creating new merchandise, companies, worth propositions and enterprise fashions. These packages put money into and handle innovation initiatives that create worth by producing new progress or price financial savings.
  • Tradition Change: Reworking the corporate to determine an innovation tradition. This may increasingly embrace new processes, metrics, incentive methods, or altering organizational constructions. These transformations assist the corporate innovate in a constant and repeatable approach.

Innovation Tradition: What are the blockers and enablers of innovation in your organization –

  • How a lot time does your management spend on innovation?
  • The place does innovation stay in your group and the way a lot energy does it have?
  • What’s your kill price for innovation initiatives?

To beat the innovation functionality hole, firms must create a tradition that permits the best behaviors to provide world-class modern outcomes. A dependable indicator of the standard of your innovation tradition is how innovation groups would describe it. Is it a tradition that’s dominated by blockers of innovation or enablers of innovation?

  • Management Help: How can company leaders have the largest influence on innovation when it comes to time spent, strategic steering, and useful resource allocation.
  • Organizational Design: Find out how to give innovation legitimacy and energy, the best incentives, and clear insurance policies for collaboration with the core enterprise.
  • Innovation Follow: Find out how to develop folks’s innovation expertise and expertise and purchase the best innovation expertise. How to make sure that we’re utilizing the best instruments, processes, and metrics to check and adapt concepts with a view to scale back danger.

 Classes Realized

  • The three pillars of an innovation ecosystem:
    • Innovation Portfolios
    • Innovation Applications
    • a Tradition of Innovation
  • Obtain the Osterwalder Playbook here