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In many companies, no one is really in charge of innovation, according to Jeffrey Phillips, writing in his Innovate on Purpose weblog. A lot of people may dabble in it, based on where an idea originates.
"Since ideas can come from anywhere, and can reflect anything, it's hard to categorize and assign responsibilities for good ideas. So in any business, there are good ideas for new products being evaluated by R&D and marketing and product management, and good ideas to improve processes being evaluated by the heads of several functional groups. How do you determine which ideas have the most merit and which to fund? Who is responsible for the succcess or failure of these ideas? Short answer - a lot of different people, who have a lot of other things on their plate. Long answer - really, no one."
When a critical initiative is the part-time job of a bunch of people, usually that means little gets done on it. As one bullet point on an individual's list of job responsibilities, chances are that it never gets the critical mass of attention it needs - because true "ownership" doesn't exist. Hence the need for a "Chief Innovation Officer." Jeffrey outlines a number of roles and responsibilities that the "CIO" can fill:
- "This person should be responsible for implementing the tools, processes and culture to help each function record and evaluate ideas and move the best ones forward."
- "He or she could apply funds or resources to nurture great ideas and to provide some assistance to teams within the organization."
- "He or she should report an innovation pipeline, consisting of ideas that relate to products, and processes, and services, to the senior management team."
What else should be in the Chief Innovation Officer's job description? Send me a feedback message with your ideas, and I'll compile them and publish them here. |
