5 learnings from a successful innovation team

Whether we have experience guiding an innovation team? In recent years, we have accelerated dozens of innovation teams. Sometimes this was easier than other times. What have we learned? A lot. Therefore, here are five lessons you can take with you yourself when you innovate:

1. Innovation is multidisciplinary: with a broad set of skills you learn faster
2. Structure and transparency are important to really act as an innovation team together work
3. Freedom to experiment to test assumptions
4. An innovation mindset: curious, driven and action-oriented
5. Focus on the real relevant stakeholders for the team

Innovation is multidisciplinary

To make an innovation team as self-directed and efficient as possible, they are formed in a multidisciplinary way. A team member is added from each relevant expertise in developing an innovation. This allows them to jointly tackle the entire process without having to wait too much for third parties.

Team members from such a multidisciplinary team also have a shared foundation. Experience in developing innovations (Design Thinking / Lean startup). The shared foundation forms a foundation on which the areas of expertise add something, and at the same time speeds up the process. With team members who have little or no experience in innovation projects, it is important to do pay attention to these skills; interviewing, experimentation, customer-centric thinking, etc.

One example is ABN AMRO's multidisciplinary innovation team that Zjef have developed. This team has a shared foundation of user-centred innovation.
And also very broad expertise; user experience design, (content) marketing, psychology, front end development & lean startup. This diversity within the innovation team allowed us to go through the build-measure-learn loop (lean startup) at high speed. For instance, an initial prototype of the chatbot was built in just two weeks... and shot off by users. With those learnings, we could move forward again.

Structure and transparency

Innovation processes seem unstructured, but the opposite is true. As an innovation team, it is exciting not to know yet what you are working towards. But that is precisely the power of innovation. By not laying down too much in advance, you retain freedom. Freedom to put the customer at the centre of your process. Assumptions about that customer are tested, ideas are adapted. Is that a bad thing? No, but it does make innovation exciting.

With a structured and transparent innovation process, you can remove some of the tension. The structure gives an idea of how you as a team will arrive at the innovation, the transparency about how choices are made. Two examples are the well-known methods Lean Startup and Design Thinking.

Both methods give teams a handle, with Lean Startup being sharper in structure & transparency. Indeed, as an innovation team, you then work in a fixed pattern of building, testing, learning within the frame of the Business Model Canvas and determine for each experiment what the success criterion is.

Combining these two methods creates a powerful process, aiming for a successful product/service that customers are waiting for, by learning as much as possible. Click here for more information on the

An example is the Spark Talent An example of this is the Spark Talent programme. During our first edition, together with VanBerlo, we set up a very broad training with a wide variety of methods and tools from Lean Startup & Design Thinking. We received many questions, such as "when are we going to come up with ideas?". In the second edition, we had chosen to use the Lean canvas(a derivative of the business model canvas as the basic structure. Each sprint we were able to fill in parts, test, sharpen and participants had the final result in sight, namely a largely validated model. The big challenge for the third edition? More transparency in the choice process, because how do you make choices in a training course? What is good enough?

Freedom to experiment

Innovation is the discovery and simultaneous development of a future business model. As a team, you are looking for both a vision of the future and the business model. To increase the chances of success, it is important to get out from behind your desk. Go outside to research and discover what the world, your target group, the solution and the business model will look like.

Experimenting sounds scary: "You can't just use the brand", "You can't go to the customer with a non-working product (prototype)" or "what if our competitors see that landing page?" These are reactions from departments set up to protect the company. The safe frameworks, within which you operate as a company, rub shoulders with experiments designed to learn what has changed in the outside world.

A good innovation team experiences the freedom to experiment. This is often related to the relationship between the team and stakeholders in the organisation. Often this means a client keeping a team out of the wind. This does require trust in the team, which a team can build by looking keenly at the experiments themselves. Are the experiments effective, small and fast? Can we easily stop the experiment? More on experimentation? Then click

A cool example of this is the survey we included in the ANWB newsletter. After a complex search for the needs of our target audience, we were given the space to quantify these results. With the nearly 10,000 responses we received (9% from readers) a successful experiment that confirmed our previous insights.

Or as 1 of the team members said:

"A truly fantastic boost and wonderful learning moment for all our organisation. We need to use this tool much more. Less gut feeling but more contact with members. It also helps for brand awareness of us. TOP TOP TOP".

Innovation mindset

An innovation is carried by the (self-managing) team. If the team does nothing, nothing will come out of a process either. The mentality of the team members is important. Curious, hands-on and flexible.

To get to know the user and to do experiments, you have to go outside. You have to go out and see your users and customers. Only we see that it is often difficult for teams to actually take that step. A threshold that team members have to cross. Sceptical reactions this generates: "surely Steve Jobs never asked if anyone needed an iPhone" or "I don't have time".

A bit of resistance is normal when you start working in a new way. It takes some searching and you often don't know in advance exactly how things will turn out. People with an innovation mindset quickly put themselves over this resistance: "I'm curious to hear what we're going to hear anyway."

Curiosity is a foundation for innovation. Wanting to know what is going on with the user, understanding how to solve a problem and what the business model might look like. What are the movements in the market? But curiosity does not help with innovation if you are not hands-on minded. You must outwards, to test assumptions, to understand how the world works.

You can learn the mindset by doing. We have had many team members who struggled the first few times to go out to talk to customers. Sometimes even with a fire alarm as a nudge (because if you're outside anyway...).

Focus on relevant stakeholders

Don't forget your stakeholders. After all, they are essential to your success. Who should be involved in the project outside the team, and who should not? Within an agile organisation, for example, it is good to ask yourself who you are doing it for (besides the customer, of course!). Those are the most important stakeholders to include in your process.

There are also a group of stakeholders who are further away from your team. Stakeholders who influence can exert on your project, think Legal/Risk, for example. Make sure you also have a picture of these stakeholders. Make a stakeholder map at the start of a project and update it regularly. This allows you and your team to work efficiently and you know who you need in the process and when.

However, avoid constantly updating everyone. Save your energy for relevant stakeholders. Or, in an agile organisation, invite stakeholders to your (2-weekly) review. In those reviews, make sure you come to bring something (results, news), but more importantly; what do you come to get? Do you need input/resources/help from your stakeholders? Through the review truly Exploit you build a good relationship with stakeholders and keep your time to get results.

Pieter van der Boog
pieter.vanderboog@elementalstrategy.com