Keep Prioritizing Innovation in Board’s Agenda- Valutrics

Innovation is so vital for survival that it must be a regular topic item on the agenda of company board meetings.  If you have not had a fundamental conversation about innovation with your key corporate stakeholders and senior executives then these are some of the questions and topics to discuss at the first such meeting.

1.   What is the vision for our organization?  Where are we headed?
2.   What is our business strategy to achieve the vision?
3.   What role will innovation play in delivering on our strategy?
4.   Where do we need innovation – products, services, processes, marketing, sectors etc?
5.   How good are we at innovation today?  What is impeding innovation in the business?
6.   What type of product innovation do we need? How much incremental and how much radical?
7.   What is our attitude to risk?  How big are the bets we want to place?
8.   What resources are we going to allocate for innovation – budget and people?
9.   What metrics will we use?  How will we measure progress?
10.  What processes should we put in place to empower people to innovate?

When you seem to reach agreement on any of these topics it is important to play back the understanding.  What does this mean?  What will we do differently?  What will we not do?  How much are we prepared to lose? And so on.  Document the key points.  It is important that everyone is on the same page regarding goals and expectations.

Once the top level innovation strategy is agreed then progress should be regularly monitored at future meetings.  Topics might include:

1.  How are we doing against our innovation metrics and KPIs?
2.  Are all our functions aligned on this?
3.  What impediments are we finding in terms of attitudes, mindsets, skills etc?
4.  Are we getting enough good ideas?  Are we building enough prototypes?  Are our innovation processes working?
5.  Do we have some success stories to share?

It is easy for innovation to slip down the agenda because there are so many other pressing issues. Most organizations have urgent crises to deal with. Everybody will initially agree the need for innovation but then it slips down the priority list. So get it on the agenda and keep it there. Review progress, allocate resources and celebrate success. The top KPI for the CEO is Keep Prioritizing Innovation.