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‘To make your idea management initiatives thrive across countries, you need high levels of engagement, as well as process efficiency to manage this engagement and its outputs’, said Pedro do Carmo Costa. Exago’s director spoke at the Innovation Management.se Channel One Roundtable Discussion, sharing field-tested best practices to ensure international companies succeed in their innovation efforts.
The webinar ‘How to run corporate innovation initiatives in multinational organisations’ took place on 22 October. Lars Percy Andersson, Innovation Management CEO and founder, hosted the session.
‘Multi-geography, multilingual and, above all, multicultural staff bring significant complexity to already challenging, corporation-wide idea programmes. But they bring significant value, too’, said Pedro. You get valuable content, learning and collaboration, strategy alignment and engagement – with high levels of participation and contribution, making innovation everyone’s job.
Key success factors
To successfully run such a complex initiative, start by ‘creating relevance in the jobs-to-be-done and purpose of the business challenges communicated to the organisation’, Pedro explained.
Next, ‘to generate and sustain high levels of engagement, you will need a collaborative platform or system. This will allow you to process all that engagement and deliver measurable outcomes, both tangible and intangible.’
To move forward globally, Exago’s director recommends that you: get your leadership’s commitment; secure a budget (at least a three-year budget); gather and prepare your human resources; define a higher purpose; find (local) relevance; always communicate clearly; define an appealing incentives plan; use social tools wisely; be transparent and, finally, get, measure and share results.
‘These top practices guide you in designing your cross-country idea management governance model and process definition. They help you maximise your results.’
The ultimate challenge multinationals face, Pedro do Carmo Costa concludes, is to harness their greatest asset efficiently: ‘the knowledge and expertise of their people, spread across the organisation and the globe.’
You can watch the webinar recording here. If you are interested in learning more about the ‘10 best practices to make it work’, get access to the paper here.