> Three reasons companies lose their best innovators.
> 1. They fail to recognize and support the innovators
> 2. Innovation becomes a herculean task
> 3. Corporations don’t match rewards with outcomes
While the paragraphs under point 2 do discuss risk and the paragraphs under point 3 do discuss rewards, I'm not sure this article belongs here.
Risk and Reward.
Large corporations are able to pay people by doing things at scale; with sufficient margin at sufficient volume to justify continued investment. Risk is minimized by focusing on ROI.
Startups assume lots of risk and lots of debt and most don't make it. Liquidation preference applies as the startup team adjourns (and maybe open-sources what remains). In a large corporation, that burnt capital is reported to the board (which represents the shareholders) who aren't "gambling" per se. "You win some and you lose some" is across the street; and they don't have foosball and snacks.
How can large organizations (nonprofit, for-profit, governmental) foster intrapreneurial mindsets without just continuing to say "innovation" more times and expecting things to happen? Drink. "Innovators welcome!". Drink water.
"Intrapreneurial." What does that even mean? The employee, within their specialized department, spends resources (time, money, equipment) on something that their superior managers have not allocated funding for because they want: (a) recognition; (b) job security; (c) to save resources such as time and money; (d) to work on something else instead of this wasteful process; (e) more money.
Very few organizations have anything like "20% time". Why was 20% time thrown off the island to a new island where they had room to run? Do they have foosball? Or is the work so fun that they don't even need foosball? Or is it worth long days and nights because the potential return is enough money to retire tomorrow and then work on what?
Step 1. Steal innovators to work on our one thing
Step 2.
Step 3. Profit.
20% Project: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20%25_Project
Intrapreneurship: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrapreneurship
Internal entrepreneur: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_entrepreneur
CINO: Chief Innovation Officer / CTIO: Chief Technology Innovation Officer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_innovation_officer
... Is acquiring innovation and bringing it to scale a top-down process? How do we capture creative solutions and then allocate willing and available resources to making that happen?
awesome-ideation-tools: https://github.com/zazaalaza/awesome-ideation-tools