What's your strategy for overcoming innovation barriers?

1 Identify and prioritize the barriers

The first step to overcoming innovation barriers is to recognize and understand them. You need to assess the internal and external factors that are hindering your innovation efforts, such as organizational culture, leadership style, customer expectations, market trends, or regulatory constraints. You can use tools such as surveys, interviews, focus groups, or SWOT analysis to gather feedback and insights from your stakeholders, employees, customers, and partners. Then, you can prioritize the most critical and urgent barriers that need to be addressed and develop an action plan to tackle them.

2 Involve and empower your people

The second step to overcoming innovation barriers is to involve and empower your people. You need to create a collaborative and inclusive environment where everyone can contribute their ideas, opinions, and skills to the innovation process. You can use methods such as brainstorming, co-creation, prototyping, or testing to generate and validate solutions with your team and customers. You can also provide training, coaching, and mentoring to your staff to enhance their innovation capabilities and confidence. Moreover, you can reward and recognize your people for their innovation efforts and outcomes, and celebrate their successes and failures.

4 Align your innovation with your strategy

The fourth step to overcoming innovation barriers is to align your innovation with your strategy. You need to ensure that your innovation goals and activities are aligned with your vision, mission, values, and objectives. You can use tools such as the balanced scorecard, the strategy map, or the OKR framework to define and communicate your strategic priorities, measures, and targets. You can also use tools such as the portfolio matrix, the innovation funnel, or the innovation roadmap to manage and monitor your innovation portfolio and resources. By aligning your innovation with your strategy, you can create a clear direction and focus for your innovation efforts and outcomes.

5 Learn from best practices and benchmarks

The fifth step to overcoming innovation barriers is to learn from best practices and benchmarks. You need to learn from the successes and failures of other organizations and industries that have achieved innovation excellence. You can use sources such as case studies, reports, books, podcasts, or events to discover and analyze the innovation strategies, processes, methods, and tools that they have used. You can also use tools such as the innovation maturity model, the innovation index, or the innovation scorecard to assess and compare your innovation performance and potential. By learning from best practices and benchmarks, you can gain inspiration and insights for your own innovation journey.

6 Seek external support and collaboration

The sixth and final step to overcoming innovation barriers is to seek external support and collaboration. You need to leverage the expertise, resources, and networks of external partners and stakeholders that can help you accelerate and enhance your innovation capabilities and results. You can use approaches such as open innovation, crowdsourcing, or innovation ecosystems to access and engage with diverse and complementary sources of knowledge, ideas, and solutions. You can also use platforms such as accelerators, incubators, or innovation hubs to access and benefit from mentoring, funding, or exposure opportunities. By seeking external support and collaboration, you can expand and enrich your innovation horizons and impact.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?