As emerging technologies like AI approach mass adoption and fuel a growing hype cycle, organizations are forced to make sense of the complexity. Looking outward to identify and align to new trends and emerging technologies is an important exercise to turn them into tailwinds that could drive growth. However, it’s even more important to look inward and ask: Are we organized for innovation?

While lofty digital transformation plans and investments in the modernization of your technology stack may need to be scaled down in this economic climate, your transformation and innovation ambitions shouldn’t.

We are facing significant societal, cultural, and technological paradigm changes. To keep up with these changes, companies need to focus on talent and organizational change. Digital transformation initiatives that focus only on modernizing technologies and systems will fall flat when teams aren't upskilled or empowered to innovate and experiment.

Where do you start?

The challenge is to manage the available resources to continue optimizing and scaling the existing business, while making room for innovation that works toward organizational goals.

For long-term success, companies need to develop a formal innovation strategy aligned to C-level priorities. However, it's important to start small and take things step-by-step. Every organization can start accelerating innovation by discovering untapped opportunities, tuning in to trends and emerging technologies, establishing an incubator/innovation lab, and developing an exploratory roadmap.

Pick an innovation profile that you are comfortable with

Whether you are in a highly competitive market, looking to accelerate your digital transformation, making the case for CX transformation, or are already advanced in your innovation practice but struggling to keep up, the only way to make quantum leaps is to broaden the lens on innovation. Beating the odds and staying ahead of disruption calls for big moves and continuous adjustments. The most successful organizations manage and improve existing programs while exploring the future, fueling innovation.

Organizing for innovation is bigger than marketing or CX, it’s a balancing act across business priorities, resource allocation, values, and culture.

How can you start organizing for innovation now?

1. Start formalizing an innovation strategy, defining your priorities and the risks you’re willing to take. This doesn’t have to be an overly complex exercise, and a simple list of questions can serve as a starting point. The goal is to provide teams with a guideline to follow when exploring innovation initiatives. It's important not to let the process of defining an innovation strategy become a roadblock to progress, but rather a tool to focus and guide efforts.

• Empower employees with decision-making authority and encourage a decentralized decision-making process, allowing employees at different levels to make decisions that can drive innovation. This fosters a sense of ownership and autonomy, promoting creative thinking.
• Go through an innovation assessment, evaluating the effectiveness of existing processes, identifying gaps, and uncovering areas for improvement to understand whether your organization is innovating “by chance” or “by design”.

2. Start discussing innovation within each department before approaching innovation on a larger scale. Set up innovation circles or special interest groups, encouraging employees to form groups around specific topics, technologies, or trends that are relevant to the company's goals. These groups can meet regularly to discuss and exchange ideas, share knowledge, and collaborate on projects. Then bring teams together in a larger forum to share ideas, projects, and learnings.

3. Create a channel to foster communication and facilitate coordination via Slack, Teams, Discord, or whatever makes it easier for your teams to engage in conversations.

4. Make innovation a priority for every individual and consider providing dedicated time for it. While it may not be necessary to allocate a percentage of every employee's time towards innovation, providing one day a month could be a feasible option. This allows individuals to focus on exploring new ideas and solutions, which can lead to valuable insights and innovations that drive growth and progress. Other ideas include:

• Consider establishing an innovation recognition program to acknowledge and reward employees for their innovative ideas and contributions.
• Incorporate innovation goals into performance reviews to include a focus on employees’ efforts and contributions.

5. Encourage experimentation, celebrating virtuous failure every time you have the chance. Encourage teams to self-organize, try new tools, and democratize access to data and insights.

6. Equip your people with knowledge. Invest in education on creativity techniques, innovation methodology and host innovation workshops.

• Create an innovation mentorship program that connects experienced innovators within the company with less-experienced employees interested in developing their innovative skills.
• Consider implementing reverse mentoring, pairing senior executives with younger employees who have expertise in emerging technologies or trends. This can help bridge knowledge gaps and foster a culture of learning and innovation throughout the organization.

7. Use real-world pain points as your inspiration. Observe the workarounds your customers and employees use, as they may point to opportunities for better solutions.

8. Embrace co-creation and open innovation opportunities. Engage and challenge your partners to bring innovation to you and explore opportunities to partner with existing Innovation Labs.

I hope these ideas help set your organization on a path to accelerate innovation and address challenges with or without emerging technologies, but most importantly, through your people. Guided by an entrepreneurial spirit, pushed to be original and creative your teams hold a lot of the answers, if not all.

You may be one insight away from realizing that there is a more efficient delivery model leveraging virtual events that opens a new market; you might discover your team had all the ideas to design an innovative and immersive new loyalty program to grow lifetime value and increase retention. Maybe ChatGPT offers an opportunity to capitalize on your internal knowledge base and turn it into a new product.

Remember, you don’t have to be a pioneer driving radical innovation. Incremental innovation is likely within reach, you just need to focus on the right opportunities.

Want to read more on innovation? Download Merkle’s Technology Innovation Roadmap to help your organization invest smarter.