Let's talk about corporate innovation.

A thread on what I've learned & experienced in my 15 year career

1. No, they didn't reject your idea because they "don't get it".

A large corporation is inherently risk averse. Any risk you take on, not only can jeopardize your immediate team/project, but could jeopardize the entire organization. So most of the ppl in your org are focused on

safety and compliance and that is their job. Your job is to ensure a joint win by creatively finding a solution that is innovative but also satisfies their requirement. This is achievable.

And believe it or not, people want to do fun, innovation work.

2. No, they don't just fund your project bc they like you.

Innovation projects are funded based on business impact. This can be framed in different ways: alt revenue stream, cost savings, efficiencies, insights for competitive advantage.

ROI can't always be proven immediately,

but you can frame it as "return on insights". If you do this project, will you know more and be better off than not doing it?

3. Sell the Idea, constantly, in different ways.

After my project is funded, I still have to sell because in large orgs the name of the game is scale. Get proficient at telling the story of why your project matters and in multiple different ways to set up for your next project

4. The work is harder after you succeed.

If a project fails, you write a post-mortem and move on. The challenge is when you succeed bc now you have to scale. So at the beginning of the project, plan for v2, v3, v15 so you set up for success after v1.

I'm happy to share more if you're all curious about innovation. There's a lot of myth busting to be done .