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A fundamental component of innovation, and corporate innovation specifically, is change.

Corporate innovation as a function with an organization requires constant evaluation and reevaluation. As new budgets, plans, and initiatives begin anew, the beginning of the year presents an excellent opportunity to redefine and update what innovation is and isn't within your organization.

The global marketplace continues to evolve and change dramatically producing new threats, obligations, and opportunities that require transformation and evolution. Customers, vendors, employees, and colleagues demand that organizations adapt, or they will look to others offers to take care of their concerns.

If 'change' is the fundamental, underlying component of innovation, what does that mean practically and operationally? How can innovation leaders use change to their advantage? As any senior innovation leaders knows - there's more to it than change. More useful traits for innovation include adaptability, resilience, evolution, and transformation. Every organization experiences these situations on a daily basis but fewer define and proactively advance these efforts intentionally.

One of the most common techniques used by repeat corporate innovators is to specifically define what innovation is and isn't for their organization and then socialize those definitions. As the calendar turns on a new year, this is an ideal time to reset corporate innovation definitions so the entire organization knows exactly what innovation is and isn't.

Corporate Innovation: Arguably the most misunderstood activity in your org

The function of corporate practice has been around and deployed in the largest organizations in the world since at least the early 1990's.

As an activity, R&D, innovation, and transformation have been active for decades - it's not new. Yet, considering this history corporate innovation at the dawn of 2024 is still largely misunderstood and undefined. There are a wide range of innovation definitions with no clear, shared definition so it's up to each individual organization to do this work.

Conversely, those organizations who take the time and make the investment into defining innovation and producing a reliable and repeatable practice that continually produces results experience better results, higher stock prices and can more predictably plan growth.

As the calendar turns and the marketplace churns, make sure your innovation definitions are clear, shared, and profitable so you, your team, and your organization are able to serve your most important constituents.

Innovation has the capability of producing market leading results but only if the actions are well defined.

Five Frameworks For Defining Innovation

Beyond change, senior corporate innovation leaders have a menu of options to choose from when it comes to defining their innovation efforts.

Two of the most common frameworks used for defining innovation are 'growth' and 'change'. Although these can be helpful as an organizing principle - they typically don't go far enough to provide enough specificity to meaningfully impact operations and outcomes. Beyond growth and change, resilience, transformation, and adaptability should be included in any meaningful innovation definition.

As innovation definitions are inherently the underlying and fundamental component of most corporate strategies, selecting the most compelling and powerful frameworks isn't just semantics - it's literally the foundation upon which the future of the organization rests.

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