Innovation teams, I love you but...

Tough economic conditions have seen many companies hit the down cycle, which means we are seeing the cyclical disbanding of Innovation teams across many industries

But why have innovation teams not learnt their lessons, why are so many surprised when this cycle comes around again and rather than being able to stand their ground and point to their impact, they quietly disappear

Having worked in innovation for over a decade now, there is a truth behind the Logan Roy comment, too often, teams make the same mistakes:

1. Lack ambition with no compelling story and vision about what you will deliver.

You do not have the luxury of quarterly numbers to justify your existence, so that vision must be vivid, repeated and clearly delivered, supported by evidence and data to show that you are moving in the right direction.  Turning up and showing how you have improved the customer’s digital experience to improve your NPS by a few points does not cut it.

2. Absence of A players across and through the team: 

Like the Roy siblings, too many teams have people that can talk the talk but need to dramatically catch up when it comes to actually being able to execute. Without the depth of talent, initiatives stall, ambition gets smaller, and what ends up coming through the pipeline looks more like continuous improvements rather than new business models that have the potential to deliver outsized returns.

3. Money wins, and you have none. 

Creating the future requires a real investment that can allow you to outpace the competition you will be racing against. 

The fact that investments can take months to make, that it has to align to the annual budgetary cycles and by Q3, you are normally in a battle with finance to still keep some budget for the teams Christmas party, then it is no surprise when promising new ventures lose momentum and wither on the vine.

Yet, the fate of many innovation teams is set before they even start.

In one memorable scene from the recent season of Succession, Logan issues a rallying call for his legacy media company to be Fuc*ing pirates, a beautiful sentiment but just that, especially as we see in one of the final scenes of the season, this same legacy company being swallowed up by a tech giant.

As leadership teams issue a similar rallying cry for their business to become more disruptive or become fuc*ing pirates, it can only mean something if:

• you have the belief and backing from the leadership team around the vision for the future, 
• can recruit actual pirates with the right incentives and culture for them to fulfil their potential and 
• put in place the right level and duration of investment to match the vision. 

So, as innovation teams disband, the responsibility to build the future shifts to the product teams.  They will need to build the skills, tools and mindset needed to search for those new business models whilst executing the current ones in an environment where they will need to do more with less.

Hopefully, they will be able to learn the lessons from those before them and prevent the cycle from happening again, just as Microsoft, Adobe, Ørsted and Amazon have done.