From The Author

“The result is that when radical innovation happens, it often occurs in ways that few – inside and outside R&D – really understand. Logically, what is not understood can not be managed effectively . . . For five years . . . our team of researchers followed the development and commercialization activities of twelve radical innovation projects in ten large, established firms . . . Our intention is to help senior executives . . . recognize the patterns in which radical innovation occurs and identify the managerial competencies needed to make the normally long and bumpy course of innovation shorter and more productive” (O’Connor et al., 1).

Discovery

The authors propose the following recommendations for stimulating idea generation:

• Create and sustain strategic momentum for radical innovation
• Proactively implement organizational mechanisms for getting radical innovations out of the lab and into commercialization projects
• Develop a receiving capacity for radical ideas so that creative people have a place to go with their ideas.

Evaluation

The authors make a distinction between the people who come up with the ideas and those who recognize the business opportunities. The former lacks the required expertise, experience or talent to determine the applications for the ideas. On the other hand opportunity recognizers have the knowledge and positions within the company to help them connect ideas with application domains. In their research, the authors found that opportunity recognizers tended to be low to mid level research managers. They determined that there were two types of opportunity recognizers, gatherer and hunter. The gatherer tends to alert and ready to react to promising ideas, while the hunter is actively seeking out new ideas.

In the companies that the authors researched, the simple recognition of an idea as business opportunity by an opportunity recognizer does not necessarily trigger the evaluation process. Others in the organization had to also make the same connection for the evaluation process to begin. In the proposed Radical Innovation Hub model, the gatherer is located within the different business units and R&D, while the hunter is sent out throughout the organization to poke around and to uncover new ideas. Once an idea is discovered, the hub stands ready to respond with quick, back of the envelope assessments and with connections to organization. “In this organizational arrangement, a core group of innovation experts implements a systematic approach to evaluation, using a pool of qualified people inside and outside organization who are skilled at evaluating radical concepts. An appropriate evaluation team is assembled for each radical idea as needed and hub personnel manage the evaluation process” (O’Connor et al., 1).

Elaboration

The author’s put forth seven keys to successfully managing radical innovation projects:

• Set the Expectations of Team Members
• Identify and Track Uncertainties
• Develop and Implement a Learning Plan
• Adopt a Resource Acquisition Strategy
• Manage the Interfaces between the Team and Mainstream Organization and External Partners
• Build Project Legitimacy
• Get the Right Person for the Job

Although not in the author’s book, the Learning Plan as taught by Dr. O’Connor rolls many of the keys into the Learning Plan method. The Learning Plan allows you to track both uncertainties (technical, market, resource and organizational) and assumptions, as well as provide the manager with a mechanism for setting tasks for the team. The LP leads to identification of market/application domains for the idea/invention, which leads to the development of business model(s), which leads to business proposal(s), which leads to resource acquisition and which leads to the acceleration phase.

Acceleration

“The radical innovation project team . . . must make it through the metamorphosis from project to operating business” (O’Connor et al., 1). Although it may appear that the projects momentum would propel it through this phase, the author’s have found this not to be the case. There are many challenges facing an organization at this stage including finding a home for the new business. Often companies attempt to “force fit” a new business into an existing business unit and as the authors point out this can have “fatal consequences” as the existing business unit may fail to give it the support it needs or attempt to drive the new business through “inappropriate systems of distribution, financing and performance review” (O’Connor et al., 1). Other challenges lie in transitioning the business from the new venture team to a team that will bring the product to market and it dealing with lingering uncertainties.

To deal with the above issues and others noted in the book, the authors propose the following:

• Create a Transition Team: The team should be made up of three sets of individuals:
• Personnel from the RI project team
• Personnel from the Receiving Business Unit
• Transition management experts
• Assess Transition Readiness: Both the receiving team and the RI project team needs to identify transition tasks and define the competencies and resources for completing these tasks.
• Develop a Detailed Transition Plan: The plan should define the tasks, a timetable and the roles/responsibilities of team members.
• Identify Transition Senior Management Champions: The authors note that the companies they researched emphasized the importance of having at least two champions - one from the receiving business unit and another at high corporate level.
• Establish a Transition Team Oversight Board: A board can be a useful organizational mechanism for concentrating the power of senior management supporters.
• Provide Transition Funding and Commitment: Senior management must ensure that corporate funding, whether through the R&D unit or from general corporate funds, is available to complete transition.
• Lay The Groundwork for a Big Market: Set realistic expectations about the likely evolution of the market. Ultimately the goal of any RI project is a killer business.

Human Resource Management

The radical innovation hub can work closely with a firm’s HR group in selection, development, retaining and rewarding of the radical innovation project managers and team members.

Innovation Infrastructure

To manage this process the authors propose the implementation of a structure which they labeled as “The Radical Innovation Hub”. According to the authors “the radical innovation hub would link people with ideas, hunters and gatherers, opportunity evaluators, and key people in corporate functions and operating units” (O’Connor et al., 1). The “hub” would:

• Consult with senior management about using articulation and strategic intent to modulate the level of radical innovative activity.
• Implement techniques for stimulating idea generation.
• Act as a home base for hunters and gatherers and as the receiver for radical innovations.
• Help the champion (the person who is championing this idea) articulate the opportunity.
• Convene an evaluation panel.

The authors describe the functions that a radical innovation hub can serve:

• Benchmarking: The hub can provide senior management with performance standards for radical innovation activities.
• Implement System: The hub can recruit and train hunters and gatherers, be a ready receiver for radical innovation proposals, and establish and facilitate an assessment and decision-making process that is appropriate for radical innovation projects.
• Create a Radical Innovation Cadre: The hub can serve as a magnet to draw these people (people with a capability for and an interest in radical innovation) out of the corporate woodwork and can also actively search through the organization for radical innovation talent.
• Engage Project Teams, Serve as Experts and Serve as Mentors: The hub can establish project management systems, refine them through cumulative experience, and help radical innovation teams implement them.
• Organize and Recruit Project Advisory Board: The hub can establish project advisory boards made up of internal and external personnel.

The authors refer to a “powerful hub oversight board” that reports to the CEO (senior management) but do not go into any detail as to who makes up this board and how this board differs from the Project Advisory Board. If one looks beyond the Radical Innovation book to presentations created by the authors, you begin to understand the proposed infrastructure in more detail. Figure 5 presents a structure where the oversight board is set up to oversee all of the RI hubs, while the project advisory boards are set up to oversee the individual projects. In addition, within each hub there is also an evaluation board, to evaluate the progress of each project and to determine whether or not a proposed RI project gets approved.

Figure 5
From RI Presentation by Dr. O’Connor

Technology Development

The authors do not discuss in any detail any software or technological tools available to assist in the management of RI projects.

1 O’Connor, Leifer, McDermott, Peters, Rice and Veryzer, Radical Innovation, Harvard Business School Press, p5, 2000

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