Roles and reports of the Director of Innovation

Organizations around the world define themselves as innovative, but very few actually embrace the meaning of innovation, and far fewer have a specific plan to achieve it. If you are working on innovation, you need to plan the figure of the Director of Innovation We tell you!

It may interest you: MBA in Digital Business

Who is the Director of Innovation?

An innovative company is one that has the ability to create with an impact on the market. When we speak of “creating” we refer to developing new products or internal processes in the organization. On the other hand, having an impact on the market means that we are able to monetize innovation so that it is associated with a value that people want to pay for.

And all this responsibility falls on a specific profile within the companies and who was part of the CSuite level manager, it is the Director of Innovationthat is, from the CIO.

It is important to note that innovation is not just technology. We can use new technology in our organization and that is not why we will be innovating. Innovate and create with impact. What is certain is that in a large part of the cases the innovation is on the frontier of what is technologically possible.

The 3 horizons of innovation

Peter Drucker, the great guru of business strategy, said that throughout his life he met many people capable of managing the long term well, and he even knew a large number of people capable of managing the short term efficiently, however, there are very few people capable of efficiently managing the balance between the short and long term.

This efficient management between the short and the long term must be a capacity of the management level of the entire organization, and even more so, of the chief innovation officer.

A very useful planning technique to manage this balance and map growth is called Three Horizons. This technique appeared for the first time in the book The Alchemy of Growth, but nevertheless, in my daily work as CIO of IEBS Business School, it changed some in terms of time and form according to the needs of today’s digital companies that I pass on to you. explain and hope result from courage.

horizon 1

Horizon 1 focuses on the short term. This short term will depend on the type of company, but we can say that it is a space between 1 and 3 years. It deals with the type of innovation that occurs in this horizon. incremental innovations about existing products and services in the organization. In other words, we focus on what the market already understands as value. This horizon should consume 50% of the organization’s resources.

horizon 2

Horizon 2 focuses on the medium term, which for most companies includes a temporary period of approximately 5 years. In this case, the creation process focuses on new products and services, improving the knowledge and skills that the organization carries. In other words, innovation in this horizon focuses on new products related to existing ones. The actions to be developed in this horizon will consume approximately 25% of the resources.

horizon 3

This horizon is the one with the greatest risk, but it is also the horizon that brings organizations opportunities to break the existing rules of current markets and lead them, and even create new markets.

In this horizon, the objective is to develop new products, services, business models, channels or new companies that have nothing to do with what we know or do. The objective is to reflect on social and market trends to then see what resources we have to address a solution to a problem that does not yet exist, or even that may never exist. Horizon 3 proposed a time frame of 10 years for digital companies and their Moonshot-type projects.