Crossing the Valley Of Death to innovate

Innovation is implementing an idea. Generating the best idea and executing its implementation are the two fundamentals of innovators.

The Valley Of Death between the idea and the execution

Even in the most innovative firms, a large amounts of ideas are generated and very few are executed. However, too frequently even ideas selected by top management are left abandoned. This pathology is quite common in modern companies. It is called the Valley Of Death because the ideas have to cross the gap between ideation (Research) and execution (Development). A significant symptom of this pathology is that new contacts are created with external companies and labs or between subisdiaries but these collaborations survive only during ideation and do not continue with funds, teams and deliverables.

Innovation Departments, incubators and innovation labs share the same mission, that is crossing the Valley Of Death.
Considering the example of Safran, research is lead by Research & Technology (R&T) departments in the subsidiaries but also centrally at SafranTech.
The subsidiaries structure New Product Development activities in programs. Finally the Innovation Department has the mission to cross the Valley Of Death by driving the changeover from technological research to product development. In 2012 the Innovation Department successfully engaged all the subsidiaries in the ideation process. However even ideas consolidated and selected at the end of the process were left abandoned in the Valley Of Death!

Even Innovation Departments struggle in the Valley Of Death !

How can most disruptive ideas from Research activities integrate Development processes ? Most Innovation Departments are quite succesful at stimulating both Research's and Development's creativity with specific methods such as DKCP or Design Thinking. However, crossing the Valley Of Death is a significant step further in Innovation Management practices. Too often disruptive concepts are left abandoned and only incremental innovation is achieved as I observed in detail at Safran or Engie-GRDF.

Limits of intrapreneurship, prototypes and proofs of concept

We hear often that the solution is that an employee engage personally in selling the concept to the organisation like an entrepreneur sells its start-up to investors. Such employees are called intrapreneurs. Intrapreneurs sell their concept by presenting a prototype.They need machines and other resources to build prototypes so companies build places where to build prototypes (maker spaces, fab labs, living labs, innovation labs...). These places are open to all employees and companies hope that employees will spontaneously come and act as intrapreneurs. They try to change their innovation culture and employees engagement.

Another common practice is building a Proof-Of-Concept (POC). Possibly it relies less on a single person but on the collective decision to pay a start-up whose able to quickly build the POC.

These theories have broadly shown their limits, here is a summary :

• Having an innovation lab does not mean that employees spontaneously use it and prototype ideas. Studies show that facilitators and communities are more important than machines in the lab.
• Changing the culture of a large firm is a long process. Encouraging intrapreneurship show results only on the long term.
• We often hear "at Google they have 10% of free time to prototype ideas". However prototyping in the digital industry requires less resources than in aeronautics, nuclear, automotive and many oher industrial fields. For example a single developer coding a software in a sand box is a more representative demonstration than a single aeronautics-engineer simulating fluid dynamics.
• The problem with POCs is that they do not clearly answer the question "yes or no should we pay to inplement the concept ?". Often POCs raise as many questions as they answer or at least they do not answer all the questions. Hence the more disruptive is a concept, the more difficult it is to imagine a sharp-answering POC.
• Making a prototype or a POC implies to reduce a broad innovation field to a single idea because no manager agrees to build dozens of prototypes ! Among all the possibilities, why prototyping this idea and not that one ? They are both unknown !

Stories of succesful entrepreneurs highlight the art of pivot, that is changing from an idea that failed to a new one that integrates all that has been learned. This art is different from selling. What is it ? In large companies, if the intrapreneur prototypes and the manager decides, who does the pivot ? Who takes the time to do it ?

In the next page we will have a quick look at the theoretical bases to find time and pivot to cross the Valley Of Death.

Recommended readings to learn more on the Valley Of Death later on :
Markham, S. K. (2002). Moving technologies from lab to market. Research-Technology Management, 45(6), 31-42.
Backman, M., Börjesson, S., & Setterberg, S. (2007). Working with concepts in the fuzzy front end: exploring the context for innovation for different types of concepts at Volvo Cars. R&D Management, 37(1), 17-28.
Magnusson, P. R., Netz, J., & Wästlund, E. (2014). Exploring holistic intuitive idea screening in the light of formal criteria. Technovation, 34(5), 315-326.
In my PhD thesis, see the introduction (it is in French)

Must-read about innovation labs difficulties :
Five Reasons Your Boss Was Right To Shut Down Your Innovation Lab by Tendayi Viki on forbes.com