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 all foundations of the Lean Methodology) has written a playbook (alongside together with his affiliate associate Tendayi Viki,) From Innovation Theater to Growth Engine to elucidate how one can 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 prime three precedence at their corporations. Nonetheless, only 20% of executives point out that their corporations are able to innovate at scale. That is the problem for up to date organizations: The best way 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 Packages and a Tradition of Innovation. Below every pillar, the playbook describes three questions that leaders and groups can ask to guage whether or not their firm has the proper 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 reasonably than execution. 

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


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

  • Do your leaders get excited in regards to the incorrect innovation packages?
  • What outcomes are your innovation packages producing?
  • Are your organization’s innovation packages interconnected in a strategic means?

To shut the innovation functionality hole, corporations 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 development or value financial savings.
  • Tradition Change: Remodeling the corporate to ascertain an innovation tradition. This will likely embrace new processes, metrics, incentive techniques, or altering organizational constructions. These transformations assist the corporate innovate in a constant and repeatable means.

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 reside in your group and the way a lot energy does it have?
  • What’s your kill fee for innovation initiatives?

To beat the innovation functionality hole, corporations must create a tradition that permits the proper behaviors to supply world-class revolutionary 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 Assist: How can company leaders have the most important affect on innovation when it comes to time spent, strategic steerage, and useful resource allocation.
  • Organizational Design: The best way to give innovation legitimacy and energy, the proper incentives, and clear insurance policies for collaboration with the core enterprise.
  • Innovation Follow: The best way to develop individuals’s innovation expertise and expertise and purchase the proper innovation expertise. How to make sure that we’re utilizing the proper instruments, processes, and metrics to check and adapt concepts so as to scale back danger.

 Classes Discovered

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