Building Innovation Capacity through Internal Venturing
Innovation and renewal are often key to organizational survival. Yet most organizations struggle with how to unleash the powerful new ideas that are lurking in the minds of their employees. We have applied a variant of our scenario-based strategic planning methodology to internal venturing, where each step in the process - external scenarios, market segmentation, internal core competence analysis, and future key success factors - is used as a potential platform for generating new business ideas. This type of disciplined process allows for significant and meaningful employee involvement in new business development, including participation in internal venture fairs. It overcomes many of the obstacles that hold established enterprises in the grip of incremental change or locked into the status quo. Organization-wide application of this new approach often results in increased senior management support backed by commitment of funds and resources to fuel the engine of innovation. Translating strategic initiatives into concrete business plans - with those involved in the implementation - is the surest way to successful change.