I originally wrote this post on LinkedIn under the guise of Accidental Intrapreneur. I’m bringing it over here after reflecting that innovation is really at the heart of my activities, hence the title change. This post also brings things up to date and documents my dalliances with innovation since forever.

A few other semantic pointers. A lot has been written about what constitutes an intrapreneur and it is important. I wrote a trend report on Startup Innovation and a large portion of that covers Intrapreneurship. But this only covers innovation in traditional, incumbent organisations, and I have dallied with it far beyond. The trend report title also seems to skew the perspective, but it was more an observation on how many incumbent organisations were taking a leaf out of startup pages with lean startup methodology, for example.

Regardless of the semantics, this post lists the series of choices I have made in my working life and some serendipitous circumstances that have led me down the innovation path and to my business world views. I have captured a portfolio of my adventures and if you look at the list you will see innovation at the heart of most. Below I break things down a little more specifically (to my activities) and also cover more generically what it takes to be an innovator.

1. Start and run a business or be part of a startup. This is where the innovation rubber hits the road. When you commit your own money, time and in my case even family welfare, to start a commercial endeavour based on an idea and vision, you really are experiencing innovation in its truest sense. I ran my own business for 6 years (before joining Yammer in its infancy and others since) so appreciate the startup innovation perspective intimately. It’s brutal but truly rewarding and the control you have on enacting a vision and seeing the results firsthand are priceless.
2. Mentoring startups. I’ve also been a mentor to startups, at Microsoft Ventures for many years and before that at Seedcamp. There is nothing quite like the smell of startup first thing in the morning, either directly or through accelerators like MSVentures and Seedcamp where you get massive insight and inspiration that is infectious.
3. Experience with large organisations. I’ve always worked with some of the largest brands in the world, either as customers or as an employee. I’ve covered B2B and B2C and in tech, consumer electronics and FMCG industries. I understand well the corporate’s perspective and it is a beast you need to be able to navigate, especially when it comes to innovation at scale. While I see startups and entrepreneurs as the life blood of innovation success, it’s not exclusive – as long as larger organisations start to rumble like them. I captured how I thought Microsoft has done well in this: Dinosaurs can dance – the Microsoft story.
4. Innovation hacking. I’m a huge fan of innovation – it has me in its thrall as you might tell. But I also think innovation needs constant innovation. The hacking approach is an interesting take on how innovation can be approached. I’ve helped many customers run global hackathons very successfully. I’ve documented both approach and some customer work here: Disrupting Innovation. I’ve also led and participated in and even won a few, documented here: Hackathon Success.
5. Be a maker/inventor/tinkerer/experimenter. I’ve talked so far about my involvement in developing innovative products or services, either helping develop them in-house, in large corporates, on my own (we built a social software platform in my own business), helping others or hacking. The desire to create or help create is ever present. And it doesn’t start and end with products and/or services: processes, mindsets, frameworks like business models, all are ripe for innovation. The key thing is to constantly be thinking new things and doing new things to validate your thinking through data driven experimentation.
6. Stakeholder engagineer. You need to be comfortable working with the people in the organisation that will make things happen for your initiative – that is very often senior executives. By way of example, I was working with a large banking customer. We closed a $30m deal where I got the ball rolling with Yammer 18 months prior. Yammer was seen as key in driving innovation efforts. I built a relationship with the CEO who spearheaded the Yammer drive and was instrumental in explosive Yammer growth and changing their innovation culture. I then managed to get him to speak at events for us presenting to other senior execs. Whether internally or with customers, always start at the top.
7. Ability to communicate. You need to have excellent communication skills. For outreach efforts (through internal social channels for instance) to scale reach, create awareness and build a culture of innovation. Also to get your ideas across, especially with how to communicate and get what you need from decision makers. The link above captures an outreach technique I’ve honed to reach members of the business outside of current relationships. The target is to broaden relationships and reach business decision makers that will take ownership and drive adoption of new innovative technologies or initiatives in the organisation. Success rates when I use this technique are routinely close to 100%
8. Collaboration. Just as it is important to engage senior executives, so too is it important to connect with the working community around you, especially those effected by your initiative or can help with it. I am good at building and managing virtual communities and spin one of these up too every time I am working on a new project or initiative that could do with the help of the crowd. Equally important is mastering the tools of collaboration of which there are many and thankfully, based on my working in this space, I am very proficient in.
9. Customer orientation. I am very Druckerian in that I believe the sole purpose of business is to create and retain a customer, powered by innovation. I believe you can have customers on the inside too – the different stakeholders and community of “users” you need to target with your initiative. I’ve written about this before. The last few years of my experience have been focused on customer success – the art of making the recipients of your technology, service or product, successful in its use. But the truth is I have always been as obsessed with customers as I have innovation, and they are always my starting point.
10. Business outcomes and value. Your initiative or business needs to “show the money” at some stage, in terms of driving business value. I know it is very fashionable for many startups to close huge funding rounds without a single sale, but the cows have to come home to roost at some stage. Sorry for all the cliches but the truth is, anything you do will have to show some tangible value for it to be able to continue for very long. Start with the end in mind and know how you will measure success and get to measuring as soon as you can. You also need to be identifying and serving the rights needs and outcomes and for this, I am a huge fan of Jobs to be Done theory of innovation and Outcome Driven Innovation.