Many of the most successful companies of the 21st century have a culture of innovation and I believe that within that culture, innovation is everybody’s responsibility. What can we learn from these companies like Apple, Google and Virgin? They have the customer at the centre of their organisations.

In order to achieve innovation you need two things in place.
1. A simple, common, organisation wide goal aligned to the customer success that everybody can work towards.
2. A framework to measure the level of the level of changes and improvements.

How did these companies achieve their innovations? By looking at the customer experience, understanding the customer expectations and aligning their organisations to achieving successful customer outcomes.

I think you need to start with looking at the innovation history of the company. If it’s a routine process for them, then I’d favor a decentralized approach. If it’s something completely new, you need to start somewhere, and a dedicated innovation team seems to make sense. BUT, that team should not the in charge of developing and implementing new ideas. Rather it should be in charge of developing an approach to innovation and implementing the approach, educating the organization on it, delivering the message, etc. Pretty much like a change or strategy team: they are not in charge of doing it, but in setting it up and supporting the organization with implementing the change and the new strategy. Dedicated resources, yes, but only to drive the innovation process and making it a capability of the organization. At least if you want to make it everybody’s job. I don’t think innovation will work as a stuff function. Responsibility needs to be with the businesses. Although an Innovation Office can be made responsible for driving the innovation efforts. And don’t forget to align your reward system…

It has also been argued that different types of innovation need different processes. So you should define what innovation outcomes you are looking for in the first place: product and services innovation, strategic innovation, business model innovation, operational innovation or management innovation.

http://www.innovationgames.com/

(disclosure: Innovation Games is our client–but I am speaking from experience using them, not as a shill).

This post was mentioned on Twitter by timkastelle: Blog post – Who is responsible for #Innovation? Innovation teams v. distributed innovation http://bit.ly/6g7cqV...