TAKE ACTION!

            1.    Start planning your innovation operating system.

                       Your Innovation Mandate begins with the goal of achieving strategic advantage in the marketplace, so in the planning phase you should think specifically about how innovation is going to add value to your strategic intents, and focus on the areas where innovation has the greatest potential to provide strategic advantage. In the well-managed innovation effort, you expect insights to come about as the result of carefully constructed and managed processes and activities, not by random chance.

            2.    Keep it simple!

                       Complexity does two things: it discourages the sometimes sensitive human beings, who find they must either play politics or thread their way through a bewildering environment to promote a new idea; and it makes even routine incremental advances much more difficult.

            3.    Engage your stakeholders from the top down.

                       Innovation will be driven by the people who work in your organization, and they need to be 100 percent on board. At the end of the day, the Innovation Mandate is all about trust and awareness. Your stakeholders need to trust that their efforts will not go unnoticed and that failure is to be expected, and they need to be aware that innovation needs to be as natural as any other job function.

            4.    Position your company for innovation success.

                       Like Coca-Cola, align your organization around the dictates of the market. Empower each team member to make decisions that apply to their own groups and roles. For the highest level of engagement, help your employees align their own self-interest with the organization’s interests. Allow your team members to migrate into new groups and to align themselves with their own self-interests within the company. Hire only people who will think outside the box and devise unique solutions to complex problems.

            5.    Use the Act, Make, Impact framework.

                       This is the broad supporting structure of your Innovation Mandate. Ensure it’s robust, durable, and has the full commitment of the organization.