How to set up your team and process to support digital innovation in your organisation

Start with an appropriate innovation strategy

First off, obviously, you don’t want just any digital innovation. It has to be purposeful and reflect the state of your company. Innovations should help you overcome challenges and make the most of new business opportunities in your niche. There’s no room for art for art’s sake. That’s why you should start with a strategy. What should such a strategy comprise?

DIGITAL INNOVATION STRATEGY

• The problem that you or your customers are currently facing
• The desired result, the effect you expect to see once the innovation is implemented
• A roadmap to the end result (where do we want to get and how?)
• An innovation team (who should be responsible for implementing innovations in our company?)
• Critical milestones (what are the stages of each project?)
• Metrics and success criteria (how can we know we’ve achieved our goals?)

Also, you ought to think of the most useful and beneficial aspects of your business. Implementing an innovation concerning staplers in your office is not necessarily a good idea. It’s so much better to concentrate on something that will help you:

• Improve customer experience/customer service
• Build better relations with HCPs
• Retain more regular clients
• Sell more products/close more deals
• Decrease complaints and side effect of your medications

Your strategy should indicate crucial aspects and technologies of your daily work. In our recent study that we’ve conducted among pharma companies, respondents pinpointed several critical technologies and areas that they focus on concerning innovations in their companies: As you can see, the majority of pharmaceutical companies focus on AI, big data and digital training. Perhaps it’s a good direction for your company as well? However, it would be best if you remembered that digital innovation is all about enabling you to achieve something that was impossible or troublesome without it. Digital innovations address the needs of your clients, patients and other users (physicians). Again, let’s use a pharmaceutical example:

• Start with the need that should be addressed: Your patients need treatment that’s better adjusted to their bodies.
• The digital innovation that can help solve this problem: Wearables
• How this problem can be solved with wearables: You can ask patients to wear these smart devices so that they can monitor the state of their organisms and provide physicians with accurate, live data. This way, the doctor has a more thorough insight into their condition and can make a more accurate diagnosis.

And that’s the way you should think about digital innovation: The problem comes first. Start with it, then look for a solution.

Who should be on your innovation team?

Now, this part is critical. Depending on who will be in your innovation team, you will be able to reach your goals more or less effectively. For example, suppose you leave your team without any legal advisors. In that case, it can turn out that this specific innovation is impossible/troublesome to implement due to your by-laws or other legal documents that you ought to follow. Building a team missing at least one researcher can result in omitting some interesting opportunities just because you didn’t know about them. And maybe one more example, if you have no tech architects on the team, you will have a hard time deciding how difficult given innovation will be to implement.

As our experience shows, if you work in the healthcare industry, your perfect innovation team should comprise at least these professionals: Usually, the project owner is also the team leader. They are responsible for managing the whole team and showing the right direction. Make sure your project owner is an experienced specialist who knows your organisation inside out. In some situations, the marketing manager will deal with this task perfectly. In others – one of the management board members or a general manager.

Facilitate the innovation process and idea management

There are a few ways that will help you streamline the innovation process in your company. For starters, you need to equip yourself with online tools. We have some suggestions for you:

Are you looking for new innovation ideas? Try Crowdicity Use Miro if you want to enhance brainstorming in your innovation team If you find it difficult to manage the workflow, go with Trello Choose Slack to enable quick and straightforward communication within your innovation team Sometimes, you may decide to look for a more comprehensive tool that will allow you to manage the whole process from one place. This is where DXPs make a case for themselves. Read our article about digital experience platforms to find out more.

However, when it comes to managing and implementing innovation, you need more. Here’s how you should design your innovation management process:

CORPORATE CULTURE: IDEA MANAGEMENT

For starters, make sure there is a conducive atmosphere in your company. People have to feel that they can experiment, try and propose something new, and won’t be criticised if something goes wrong. You have to understand that every digital innovation entails some risk. There’s no avoiding it. Make sure your team knows that, too.

Some large corporations decide to outsource the innovative process because of the complex network of dependencies and regulations. In such a setup, the external company thinks about improving products and services, and the internal team concentrates on processes.

SET THE DIRECTION BUT BE FLEXIBLE

In order to achieve something new, you need to have a specific goal, desired end result, but, at the same time, you must be open to changes. Sometimes it’s necessary to adjust your process to the current results of your activities and the response coming from the market. So-called rapid prototyping model enables this approach. It is a process where a given problem is addressed in short iterations. The solution is next prototyped and can be verified with the test target group. Based on the feedback received, you go further, refine the solution or change it altogether. That’s the best way of thinking about digital innovations.

If you're currently working on implementing innovation in your company and feel that you need help, drop us a line. At NoA Ignite, we help companies overcome their challenges and come up with new technology solutions and services that answer the needs coming from the market. Let's find out what we can do together!