Internal Innovation – Look Within For The Answer

by Startacus Admin

Whitespace Ventures Corporate Innovation Club has published its second report, titled Titled 'Internal Innovation – Look Within For The Answer', compiling insights and ideas from leading voices in Corporate Innovation.

The 2nd report brings together key themes from the latest bi-monthly gathering of the group's members. The Club is formed of a community of over 40 international and global Corporate brands, with representatives convening bi-monthly to learn form each other – with regard to both successes and failures – while digesting the insights of specially invited expert guests. The 2nd report follows the publication of the Club's inaugral report titled The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Corporate Accelerator Programmes.

The November 23rd meeting looked at the movement to recognise, implement and maximise the impact of an Internal Innovation programme approach. Much was discussed, but broadly speaking the meeting focused on including internal processes and procedures in the innovation process, and engaging with employees to encourage them to be active agents in the process of innovation.

“We had a very exciting meeting," said Andrew Webber, the Chair of the Whitespace Ventures Corporate Innovation Club. "We discussed the topic of Internal Innovation broadly and established the core tenets of productive Internal Innovation; Top-level staff communicating a strong, clear strategic narrative, managers must be trained in Internal Innovation and Internal Innovation cannot exist without communication that is democratic, open and proactive”.

Engage for Success’s Co-Founder and an invited speaker at the meeting, David MacLeod (OBE), was very impressed by the quality and the outcomes of the dialogue which took place during the meeting: “Fully engaged employees are central to Internal Innovation. Yet fully engaged employees with no focus and direction can become like ‘headless chickens’. Therefore, the most effective employees in Internal Innovation are those who are fully engaged and at the same time fully supportive of and ‘own’ the Corporate’s vision and direction.”

The Club then convened again on the 30th of January and the main focus of this meeting was the topic of Corporate open innovation approach and engaging with the tech startup ecosystem.

If you are interested in corporate innovation, you might want to read our recent interview and discussion on Corporate and Startup Collaboration with the Global Innovation Director at Nestlé.

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Published on: 24th February 2018