Corporate innovation is a difficult concept to grasp in today’s business world. The idea of corporate innovation and how it will benefit your business can come across as intimidating, but we hope we can help you understand this ever-changing field. Corporate innovation has little to do with your company’s actual products or services. It is more of a euphemism or marketing term for your company’s process to take an idea from concept to a working product. It may sound simple enough, but there are a lot of steps and pitfalls that come with this undertaking.

The process begins with a task from your company’s leadership team asking employees to submit ideas for the innovation projects. The purpose of this is to focus the talents and ideas of your company in an organized way. You will need to engage employees in this process by giving them tools like idea management software or innovation contests. Once you have an idea pool filled with innovative concepts, it’s time to put together project teams of cross-functional members with the right skill sets to bring the idea into reality.

Next, you’ll need to identify what skills are needed for this team. You don’t have to know everything about every skill needed, but it’s important that your project teams can access all of them when they need them. Once your project teams are assembled, find out what data is needed to complete the project and see how you can quickly access that data. After that research is conducted, it’s time for your teams to brainstorm ideas with each other to determine which idea is most innovative.

Once an idea is selected, the project begins with a cost analysis of the resources needed. Once they are identified, use technology like platform as a service or cloud computing to make those resources accessible. This is when you need to assign due dates and deadlines and communicate those regularly with your project teams. Finally, you’ll want to secure the innovation by finalizing and approving it before continuing.

The entire point of corporate innovation is making that process as efficient and painless as possible. It’s an adding-on task that some may not take seriously, but if you need your employees to innovate and innovate often, this is one way to do it. Corporate innovation will benefit your business if done correctly because it turns every employee into a potential innovator!