Strategicflow

This is both good and bad news for the many constituencies in research, development, technology brokerage or marketing who are eager to participate in expanded innovation strategies within their company or Open Innovation outside of their company. Innovation did beat many other competing priorities to make the top 10.

What are the CEO's top strategic concerns that outrank innovation based upon this 2007 Conference Board survey? They are Excellence in Execution and Execution Consistent with Strategy. Clearly, from an internal championing perspective, an Open Innovation initiative could gain more traction with the CEO if it could be promoted within the context of the top two goals.

Excellence in Execution implies the application of well proven processes and continuous improvement that complements an organization's competencies. Consistency with Strategy implies that new initiatives should be shown as synergistic with the existing strategic model. To the extent that proposed innovation strategies are advocated in terminology that is compatible with these top two goals, they stand a greater chance of winning and maintaining top management support.

The Brooks Group has conducted massive studies of the persuasive value of certain words with respect to CEOs. To align with top management's top two goals of Execution Excellence and Consistency with Strategy, certain words should not be used in promoting an innovation initiative. Brooks Group suggests that the terms to be avoided at all costs, especially with Technologies Innovation Strategy focused CEO's, include: pioneering, cutting edge, experimental, revolutionary, substantial change, and yes... innovative. Instead, Brooks Group's research proves that winning dialog includes phrases such as: controllable progress, no guesswork, proven and tested, designs are similar to, protect what you've built, minimize the human factor, and of course ...no surprises.

To the extent that the wrong vocabulary is used to promote Innovation Initiatives, these initiatives are not likely to get off the ground, or they may quickly lose top management support. Much of the popular discussion of the term Open Innovation overlooks many of these terminology landmines.

In discussing the fundamental basis of Open Innovation, Henry Chesbrough, in chapter 4 of his book Open Business Models lays out the straightforward solution to addressing top management's key strategic interests AND pursuing open innovation at the same time.

His approach if adopted can address management's concern that an Excellent Process is being promoted and followed. He proscribes that the foundation of Open Innovation is to thoroughly analyze the global intellectual property landscape for any product or technology, and then to prove this understanding to top management in terms of the company's strategic business model. Open Innovation motivated transactions of selling or purchasing intellectual property can then be framed in terms of the top two goals; Evaluated with an Excellent Process, and Consistency with the Corporate Strategy.

He reports that many organizations fail to do this mapping, specifically, they scan and map the global technologies landscape only at the level of technology vocabulary, not in strategic business model vocabulary and visualizations. This leaves open the "human factor" of interpretation, which requires "guesswork" and perhaps open ended discussions and therefore "uncontrolled progress"- all are factors that Brooks Group has shown to confound top management.

Chesbrough acknowledges that management is well justified in being concerned about the gaps in process and communication, and the Conference Board survey reinforces why some innovation teams may be having trouble getting or keeping management's attention and support.