Innovation Journal - Cognizant

REINVENT - SEEDING INNOVATION
Team members summarized their learning in these sessions as,
“Innovation is a journey, not an event. We need to nurture an
environment for teams to embark with confidence and enjoy this
journey.”
Thinking inside the box: Leaders have a responsibility for challenging
their teams with the right problems for generating ideas. These
challenges can be aimed at continuous improvement or creating new
products, solutions, services or a radically better customer experience.
These sessions were designed to identify, rate and rank top 10
innovation opportunities. Specific challenges were opened up to team
members, inviting their viewpoints and ideas.
Innovation, in this networked world, is no longer the preserve of the
few; we emphasized the need for leaders to leverage the innate
capabilities of their teams and draw upon their collective creative
confidence to solve challenges.
Horizons: The executive manager and his direct reports reviewed the
top 10 list and divided it into two parts:
The Horizon 1 list aligned with operational priorities that impact
efficiency and effectiveness.
The Horizon 2 list targeted new action items that the team needed
to embark on and experiment with. Team members came up with
a wide variety of ideas – some radical and others seeking to
fundamentally alter what they had been doing all along.
The executive manager and his peer leaders were excited to see the
passion of their team members in accepting these challenges and
creating concrete, actionable idea proposals. When asked how he
could motivate and reward the team to continue with the managed
innovation initiative, all the team asked for was, simply, 15 minutes of
face time with the executive to pitch their top emerging ideas.
The underlying philosophy for these workshops included:
Well-researched methods to identify and prioritize transformational
opportunities.
A cost-effective, risk-mitigated framework to execute ideas,
making it easier for the business to embrace innovation.
Do all this in an effective, engaging and entertaining way that
liberates the mind and appeals to the heart.
Following the workshops, a large number of useful ideas surfaced,
along with a few powerful ones that gathered strength and were
shaped into a shared vision in short period of time. These ideas were
pitched to the executive leadership, seeking funding and a green signal
for implementation. Ultimately, a managed innovation initiative,
branded as “No Boundaries,” was launched organization-wide.
By asking a simple question, this healthcare leader generated some
powerful ideas that were shaped into a shared vision for new avenues
of opportunity. It took courage to experiment in this way, as well as the
senior executive’s own willingness to invest significant time into the
initiative.
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