This post looks at the blended innovation model within an enterprise – it expands on the previous post on A Start-up within an Enterprise

In a market segment/space, the portion that’s captured by an enterprise is its core. Outside this core is the new growth opportunity (the white space) that the enterprise has not (yet) captured; there can be additional enterprises in the same segment/space and over time the segment/space can increase and/or decrease – for the purpose of this post, we will assume that the segment/space stays the same.

A brief re-cap on enterprises, startups and disruption: more details here and here.

Evolutionary

For most (enterprise) organizations, the core is grown by the natural evolution of the products/services: as customers use the products/services their requests transform the roadmap. With (somewhat) uniform time and resources, focusing on everything all the customers ask for becomes a challenge and priority is given to the top tier customer base.

Most enterprises operate this way due to the low risk, as the needs have already been validated (due to customer demand). This type of innovation falls under evolutionary innovation.

Revolutionary

For startups, the entire “new growth” opportunity becomes the initial target; as time goes on and effort is put into defining the product-market-fit a smaller “core” emerges. In many cases the (perceived) core might pivot several times (see below A -> B -> X) prior to eventually finding its eventual core (if it doesn’t completely fail by then).

The risk is much higher as customer validation still needs to happen, and significant time is spent in validation/product-market-fit. This type of innovation falls under revolutionary innovation.

Disruption

When these two behaviors exist within their own respective entities (startup and enterprise) and are in the same space/segment they form a complementary relationship – which often results in the demise of the enterprise (unless the enterprise acquires the startup). The customers that are lower in priority for the enterprise move to the startup, either because the product is too feature rich, the needs are not met or they feel that the enterprise has become too big for them (low end disruption, See Clayton Christensen’s work on disruption). As they move out, the enterprise sees that as an opportunity to expand to the new (higher revenue) opportunity and move away from the lower end. As time goes on, the enterprise’s core continues to move outwards and the startup continues to encroach into the enterprises core until the enterprise has nothing left (eventually leading to the startup becoming its own enterprise).

 

 

The above describes the outcome when the two innovation modes are two different entities – but what if they were to be combined within an enterprise as a strategic initiative?

Blended Innovation

By making it a strategic initiative to combine both of these models within an enterprise to achieve a blended innovation engine; enterprises can greatly improve their competitive advantage and also accelerate their organic growth. With executive sponsorship, an additional dedicated team would need to be created (the MVIT).

A simple matrix can be put together to understand the differences between the core and the MVIT:

The interplay between the teams in a blended model is outlined below (to cover additional complexity a multi-core/multi-BU enterprise is used).

An enterprise that has multiple BU’s may cover different verticals in its “new growth” space; however, since each core operates in an evolutionary way, most do not cash in the opportunity to build organically within the shared (white) space.

There also needs to be some sort of “idea allocation engine” so that white space ideas (shared and non-shared among various BU’s), non-core customer requests and other exploratory ideas can be funneled into the appropriate team as there may be several ideas that seem “revolutionary”; but in-fact, they are actually more evolutionary in nature. The VCG (venture champion group) can help be the funnel to ensure that the MVIT is working on the appropriate opportunities (see:A Start-up within an Enterprise).

Once the idea generation and intake funnel is in place, the MVIT can begin piloting product for customer validation by releasing small pilots in the various spaces that iterate in functionality over time with customer involvement (as the viability becomes more obvious).

Developing the pilot in a common language/platform will help with the transition and once the pilot is ready, it would be supported by the MVIT. Should a pilot gain significant traction, the MVIT would continue to support it in a limited availability engagement and once a MVIT produced product enter limited availability, the BU should start planning for support, integration, release and productization under GA.

The integration/transition process from MVIT to Core will likely be significantly more involved than the other efforts.

Depending on the release and GA schedule, the Core will absorb the customer-validated pilot into the core – providing it a competitive advantage that was accelerated with the help of the MVIT that it would otherwise not have had.

 

In summary

A blended innovation model can greatly improve the competitive advance for an enterprise and also accelerate its organic growth. To successfully implement a blended innovation model it must be taken on as a strategic initiative, backed by executive sponsorship, have an additional dedicated team (MVIT), an idea allocation engine and a process for transition so that the investments in the blended model can be realized.