Successful Corporate Innovation Programs: Best Practices

Swisscom: Innovation Must Be Company-wide

Corporate innovation can only succeed where the entire company is invested in it. At Swisscom, Switzerland's leading telco-provider, bottom-up innovation powered by KICKBOX Intrapreneurship, has proven as a successful method to develop a company culture where all employees are engaged in innovation. Moreover, it has made a way for all employees, regardless of their seniority level to work on their ideas without constantly checking in with multiple line managers. Using working time vouchers that form part of the KICKBOX program, each manager can decide what percentage of an employee's work time should be dedicated towards further development of their ideas. 

The best innovations often come from employees who engage with the products, the company, and its audience. KICKBOX Intraprenuership, helps to actively support those driven and ambitious employees, and drive company-wide bottom-up innovation.

Google: Innovation Isn’t Something To Just Tick Off

Google is one of most successful tech firms on the planet. And many of its triumphs can be attributed to a powerful corporate innovation strategy. The organization is well-known for its 20% rule, in which employees are permitted to allocate 20% of their time to innovative projects. This tactic has been a catalyst for success time and time again. Successful innovations that came from this rule include: Gmail, AdSense and Google Talk.

The lesson here is clear: you cannot fall into the trap of simply dedicating an hour a week to innovation. Employees must be encouraged to work on their ideas whenever inspiration strikes.

Wohntraum: Innovations Should Solve Real Problems

When thinking about innovation, many companies fall into the trap of thinking they need to do something entirely new or radical. However, just as in the case of a startup in the field of real estate, Wohntraum, it is often better to look at the market and see how you can solve even the smallest of problems for the end user. It is easily one of the most effective routes to disrupting an industry.

Whether it’s producing a cost-effective alternative or bringing a new concept to the sector. If your innovation solves a problem by considering the client’s perspective, you will be destined for greater returns.

Apple: Failure Should Be Embraced

According to  95% of new product innovations will fail. Even Apple has a long list of failures. However, every Macintosh portable is a step towards dominating the market with the iMac and Macbook. And, trust us, there will be hundreds of ideas that won't even have made it to production.

If your company is to succeed, it must champion psychological safety. If employees fear failure, they will not submit their ideas. Similarly, accepting failure as a part of the process will prevent you from dwelling on failed ideas for too long.

Siemens Energy: Innovation Should Have An Actionable Roadmap

For innovation to succeed, you must start with practical goals that are designed within the context of your brand and turn this into an actionable roadmap. Siemens Energy did this with the help of the KICKBOX Intrapreneurship program, creating a visible innovation process to ultimately support its mission statement of energizing society across the entire value chain.

To fully benefit from corporate innovation programs, it's essential to cultivate a company-wide culture of innovation, integrate innovation into the daily routines of the team, and ensure that innovation addresses real-world problems. Above that, ensuring employees that they can submit their ideas even if these prove unsuccessful, is also key to driving corporate innovation programs forward.