Front-end innovation often feels like bingeing a new Netflix series with no trailers, no previews, and no season synopsis. You keep hitting “Next Episode,” hoping the storyline will eventually tie together, but you’re never quite sure where it’s headed, or if it’s going anywhere at all.
That’s the black box problem in innovation: it’s essential for long-term survival, but it’s hazy, unpredictable, and notoriously hard to manage.
The good news? You don’t have to settle for streaming blind. With the right strategy, you can finally see the season arc, where you are now, what comes next, and how it all builds toward future growth.
Exploratory innovation is integral to your enterprise’s long-term survival, but managing that innovation can be challenging. You need to know how new technologies are discovered and which ones to pursue, how long the process should be expected to take, how to allocate resources effectively, and most importantly, how they’ll contribute to your company's long-term growth objectives.
To get a handle on this, you need to know what’s happening in front-end innovation (FEI). And that’s much more difficult than it sounds. This domain of innovation is notoriously hazy and unpredictable. We know it’s essential, but we don’t always know what kinds of results we can expect. We refer to this lack of transparency and predictability in FEI (and the other facets of enterprise innovation) as the black box problem—but it’s a problem with a solution.
Growth innovation cracks open the black box
We work with clients who have managed to overhaul their innovation processes, significantly improving their pipeline throughput, time to market, and profit margins. And we’ve synthesized what we’ve learned from these enterprises into an innovation management methodology called growth innovation.
In a nutshell, this is an innovation management philosophy that establishes growth as the most critical outcome of innovation. And we found that managing the innovation process becomes much more straightforward as you align your innovation processes around three principles:
- Growth
All innovation activities are connected to clearly defined and measurable growth targets. Research and discovery efforts are focused on projects that will contribute to current and future revenue streams. - Visibility
Innovation management data, including areas of research, progress, projected readiness timelines, risks, and challenges, is centralized and accessible to the stakeholders who need it. - Orchestration
Decisions are made with a mind toward their potential ripple effects, and innovation efforts are consistently recalibrated to keep projects on schedule and on strategy across the whole portfolio.
Ultimately, growth innovation can only be achieved at scale with a purpose-built enterprise innovation management system like Accolade. But there are still steps you can take to begin dismantling your black box problem right now.
Creating a growth innovation strategy for FEI
Gather your FEI leadership team to help you craft a growth innovation strategy. The earlier you can bring FEI leaders into this process, the better. Their early involvement will not only help you facilitate long-term planning for innovation initiatives across the enterprise, but it will also provide you with valuable insights into current FEI activities.
A growth innovation strategy identifies the specific outcomes that innovation efforts must achieve to contribute to enterprise growth objectives. These outcomes then become the measurable targets guiding your innovation initiatives, translating the strategy into actionable steps that become the roadmap to your innovation efforts.
For a detailed guide on crafting your strategy, check out “How to Translate Corporate Objectives into a Growth Innovation Strategy,” and download the template to walk you through the steps.
As you map your enterprise growth objectives to your innovation outcomes, pay close attention to any gaps in corporate initiatives. Most businesses establish a tactical strategy a couple of years in advance, but it can get a little hazy in the 3–5-year range. Take note of any long-term corporate aspirations: “We want to be the leading provider of [XX] by [DATE].” If the path to achieving these goals is unclear, note this for further exploration—because solving that mystery will likely fall to FEI.
You can leverage the expertise of your FEI professionals to identify and address areas where the innovation strategy is lacking. This can be done by examining three specific areas:
- Official objectives
The people involved in FEI initiatives every day can help identify projects or initiatives they’re working on that definitely connect to known enterprise objectives. - Unofficial objectives
Next, explore innovation projects and initiatives that could be attached to objectives that are yet to be formally identified and communicated. - Potential opportunities
Lastly, identify areas that your FEI professionals believe should be getting innovation attention in order to achieve enterprise objectives, but are currently being neglected or undervalued.
As you work through these areas, focus the discussion around growth and revenue generation. Each initiative and project needs to map to tangible financial outcomes. This helps ensure that innovation directives are directly tied to the overall enterprise objectives.
Audit your FEI portfolio against the growth innovation strategy
Collaborate with FEI leaders to compile an exhaustive inventory of all ongoing front-end innovation projects. Then use your growth innovation strategy as a benchmark for auditing existing FEI activities by examining them against the following considerations:
- Strategic alignment
Determine which projects are directly contributing to the overarching growth innovation strategy. - Gap identification
Are there areas where the current FEI project portfolio fails to address key elements of the growth innovation strategy? - Scope deviation
When comparing projects to the growth innovation strategy, do any initiatives or projects appear misaligned with the strategy or outside of its scope?
Now, you can create a master list of the current FEI projects, ranking them by their potential revenue contribution and alignment with your strategy. As you compile your master list, consider the crucial information you’ll want for every project. This might include:
- Planned launch date vs. projected launch date
This comparison highlights potential delays or advancements in the project timeline. - Planned budget vs. actual cost
This assessment will reveal budget overruns or any cost-saving measures that have been implemented. - Milestones, checkpoints, and project status
This information maps out the critical stages where the project's continuation or termination will be evaluated, and marks where the project currently is in the process. - Key project staff
This may look like a list of individuals responsible for driving each project's success and accountable for hitting essential milestones.
Keeping this list up to date is critical to productively managing FEI projects, but it can also be helpful in other strategic ways. For example, it can help you reallocate resources or adjust timelines to speed up projects with significant revenue potential and redirect attention from projects not meeting your growth innovation criteria. It will also help you more quickly identify when you need to launch new initiatives to capitalize on untapped opportunities.
Prioritize real-time project transparency in FEI
Compiling your master list of open FEI projects will offer a lot of clarity about where your exploratory innovation is right now, but the list must be updated to maintain that transparency—otherwise the black box will clamp back shut again.
Socializing your master list
This starts with identifying who needs editing access to the list. This may include department heads, project managers, team leads, or even relevant executives. Identify the critical stakeholders who may be able to spin up or pause projects, as well as the mid-level team members you can trust with clerical maintenance.
The list will become your authoritative catalogue for every project progressing through the pipeline, so it is wise to establish a process for identifying and adding people who need access and revoking access if necessary.
Next, you’ll want to socialize the list with these individuals. Schedule a meeting or workshop to introduce the list to the appropriate stakeholders. Create a mock-up project for the list to help demonstrate the data you want communicated and the stages you expect it to be updated. Ensure these individuals understand how to add, edit, and filter projects.
Hold regular cross-functional FEI portfolio reviews
Establish a regular cadence to gather all pertinent team members and stakeholders and walk through projects in the master list. (It wouldn’t hurt to add some individuals from NPD and GTM, too.) It doesn’t necessarily matter if these meetings are weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly, so long as they’re consistent. They should happen often enough that nothing falls through the cracks and be spaced out enough that you can see actual progress.
The FEI master project list will be your primary source of information for these reviews. Someone will pull the list up, and the team will review the status of each project, identify any roadblocks, and discuss potential solutions. You’ll assign any necessary action items, updating the list in real time to reflect any changes or expectations.
Plan for a broader rollout of the list
Once the list has become a requisite tool for keeping stakeholders informed, it’s time to socialize it more broadly. The ultimate goal is for this list to be the primary source of information for everyone working on or adjacent to FEI projects, and keeping the list updated will become a department-wide responsibility.
Demonstrate how to use the list effectively and show how to add updates in real-time, including project milestones, risks, and dependencies. Make sure that the appropriate stakeholders are notified the moment any updates are made that impact the budgetary, timeline, and/or (especially!) revenue expectations for a project.
To ensure the list remains functional and consistent, you’ll need clear documentation outlining the procedures for using it. Leave as little to chance as possible. If specific language or symbols need to be used for various stages or issues, ensure the information is communicated and accessible.
It will take persistent reminding (even nagging) to get everyone to pull this list up in relevant meetings. You might find it helpful to encourage some of your more protocol-driven team members to keep the list front of mind for everyone. If necessary, you can even include the use and updating of this list as an employee evaluation metric.
Establish growth-oriented reporting
The black box problem manifests in two characteristic ways when it comes to front-end innovation: haziness and unpredictability.
The first step in demolishing the black box was to give yourself more clarity into everything in the FEI pipeline and ensure that this transparency can be maintained over time. This gives you clarity as to what’s going on—which addresses the haziness side of the black box problem.
The next step is to ensure that each project in your FEI portfolio is being reported on in ways that align with organizational objectives. This gives you clarity as to where projects are heading—which addresses the unpredictability problem.
Audit your current reporting standards
Begin by conducting a thorough review of existing reporting practices, examining the metrics used, data sources, and stakeholders involved. You're trying to determine if current reporting practices provide the insights necessary to hit your innovation targets. Is there any misalignment between the data presented and your strategic objectives? Eliminate KPIs and reports that offer little value, and look for areas where you’d benefit from better data or more targeted KPIs.
Align metrics with growth targets
It’s entirely possible to hit all the metrics you set, and not get any closer to reaching enterprise revenue goals. So ensure you’re including KPIs that directly relate to revenue growth. These reports shouldn’t simply present data and indicate progress; they should offer actionable insights that guide decision-making and drive growth initiatives
Explore custom-made metrics
When evaluating projects, don't hesitate to tailor KPIs that are relevant to the project and the expectations. It’s easy to rely on the same metrics for every project, but it may be helpful to craft metrics that capture the unique aspects of a project and provide early signals of potential successes or misfires. You’ll want to test and refine these bespoke KPIs to ensure they provide the most meaningful insights.
It all starts with a growth innovation strategy
You shouldn’t have to rely on intuition and guesswork to manage front-end innovation. The steps we’ve outlined here will give you more clarity on FEI processes. But if you want to bring the whole operation into long-term alignment with your enterprise’s objectives, you’ll need an actual growth innovation strategy. Or jump straight into crafting it with the Growth Innovation Strategy Canvas.
To see how Accolade can automate many of the critical functions required in managing FEI, book a demo today.