Swarm Vision Innovation Talent Blog

You've probably heard the stats: The failure rate for innovation projects is 80-90%. And behind every innovation project is...an innovation team.

You may sense this already, but perhaps you haven't quite put your finger on it yet. Why is that everybody builds innovation teams the same way as they do in the Core business, when innovation teams require such different skills and operate in a such different environments? We believe everybody builds innovation teams the wrong way, and that's why 90% of them fail.

Here's how most organizations form innovation teams today. Does this sound familiar?

• They select from available members.
• Assembling diverse functional skills relevant to the project.
• And if possible, include members from different parts of the organization.
  
• They may give more effort to diversity, and may use personality assessments. But while valuable for other reasons, neither one is associated with better business outcomes.

At Swarm we believe in innovation science, not innovation fairy tales. So we pointed our team of data scientists, behavior economists and developers at this problem statement:

Problem Statement:  How might we understand the team factors within our control and significantly improve the success rate of innovation projects?

When you find candidates who score in the desired Swarm Innovation Profiler range, use interviews to dig deeper into their motivations and behavior patterns. To prepare for such interviews, be sure to study this easy guide to the Eight Innovation Skills. Candidates don’t need to (and rarely will) have all of the eight skills and 26 sub-clusters. Look for candidates whose innovation skills can strengthen the team they will be joining.

And keep in mind that Interviews alone are not sufficient for diagnosing a candidate’s innovation skills. Why? Because:

Large companies are being disrupted by the pace of change. Innovation has become an imperative for their survival. But most large companies were designed to deliver steady, incremental returns. How can organizations like your company transform themselves to deliver high growth and longevity through innovation?

This blog was originally published in InnovationManagement.se.

I grew up in Silicon Valley and credit many people here for my fascination with innovators. One early conversation with my Dad still stands out.

One of the reasons Silicon Valley is such an engine of innovation is the open culture here. Thanks to this openness, I was invited to guest blog on the topic of Driving More Innovation in Your Workforce. I invite you read the whole post, and meanwile, enjoy the Five Main Take-aways:

Everything we've built has been designed to meet customer needs. Tell us where to go. Take this short survey for a chance to win 100 free licenses to the Swarm Innovation Profiler: https://www.research.net/r/3F2L6JJ

This blog was originally published in InnovationManagement.se at on August 15, 2017. In the article, the author shares three surprising observations from analyzing the most popular innovation blogs.

Where is the Best Advice on Innovation Talent?

Innovation is a hot topic today. No wonder that there are numerous blogs on the subject. In a fascinating report, CapGemini found that “difficulty finding the right people to drive innovation efforts was the number one constraint to innovation success:”

Source: CapGemini, Innovation Leader or Laggard, 2010

So we assumed there would be lots of good advice in these blogs on the people side of innovation ‑ innovation talent, leadership and teams. We set out, full of enthusiasm, to find the best blogs on innovation talent.

Our Methodology

The Swarm Vision team set out to identify the best blogs on the subject of innovation talent. How did we do it?

• First we identified the top 60 blogs using several online lists
• We then focused on those blogs with at least 5,000 Facebook fans or Twitter followers, of which there are 31
• We then analyzed recent months of these 31 blogs, looking for any articles on innovation talent
• We also searched key terms on each of 31 blogs to unearth older articles of relevance
• We tagged each article on the aspects of innovation that it discussed (e.g. creativity, leadership, teams, hiring, retention, culture of innovation)
• Finally, we rated each blog on the percentage of articles related to innovation talent, and on the quality of those articles. We defined quality as offering clear advice (not fluff) based on empirical results, not just assertion.

Three Surprising Findings

Based on our research, we reached three unexpected conclusions:

1. Little out there on innovation talent
   

   Our first surprise was that the top 31 innovation blogs offer few articles on the subject of innovation talent. This is particularly surprising given how critical the people side of innovation truly is.
   
   

2. Casual & vague treatment of innovation talent
   

   Our second surprise was how these mentions were mostly in passing, not dedicated in-depth treatments. The blogs that did mention the topic offered pretty vague advice, such as “You need to hire the right people for innovation,” with little guidance on just how to do that.
   
   

3. No framework for innovation talent
   

   Thirdly, the subject of innovation talent seems to lack an organizing theory or framework. There are shards of wisdom here and there about creative people, environments that foster creativity, the power of diverse teams, and the like.

Our overall, but unexpected, finding is that the vital subject of innovation talent is not well developed, and that there is a need for a framework for innovation talent, to guide companies on their innovation journeys.

The Drumroll, Please

That being said, three innovation blogs stand out for covering the subject of innovation talent, and for specific articles of value. Consider these blogs your starting point:

What Do You Want to Learn About Innovation Talent?

We’d like your opinion. Please comment on this blog post, telling us:

1. Is innovation talent an important subject for you?
2. What specifically, do you struggle with when it comes to the people side of innovation?
3. What would you like to read about in an innovation talent blog?

Based on your feedback, we may just dedicate our writing to cracking the meaty subject of innovation talent!

About the Author

Suzan Briganti, CEO & Founder, Swarm Vision

Suzan Briganti brings 25 years of experience in research, strategy and innovation. Suzan has a patent pending in innovation software. She has grown Swarm Vision from a garage start-up to a trusted solution provider to global Fortune 500 clients. Swarm Vision is a platform to identify and leverage innovation talent in the enterprise to drive growth. Suzan leads Swarm Vision with a focus on building great products and teams. Suzan has an MBA summa cum laude from Boston University and a design degree from Italy.

Contact: suzan@swarmvision.com, @swarmvision