Once an innovation has proven to be valuable after the Experimentation Phase, the Innovator, Business Owner and the CIB Ambassador together assume responsibility to scale-up the innovation. When during this phase, the innovation proves its value through growth and impact it will become clear that the innovation needs to become embedded into the existing organization and its core processes. It is important to understand that the innovation should not be automatically adapted to the existing processes, but that the existing processes may need to be adapted to fit the needs of the innovation to ensure sustainable impact of the innovation.
Details
During the Scaling Up Phase, innovations are introduced into a real-life business environment. In this environment, the innovation is aimed to either replace or complement an existing practice. It is highly likely that the processes supporting the existing practice differ from the processes required to operate the innovation. When the internet introduced online shopping in the late 1990’s traditional mail order companies were among the first companies to realize its potential. These companies started experimenting with web shops and taking online orders. Although e-mail orders at small scale did not present a big problem to the traditional process of opening envelopes and scanning handwritten order coupons, scaling up the online order processes, and scaling down the mail-order process presented all sorts of practical mishaps and mayhem.
Every innovation starts as an Idea; a thought of one individual about how a particular customer need or problem can be alleviated. The innovation cycle ends when this solution has been embedded as a standard process and has become the norm rather than the challenger.
To embed an innovation as a standard process it should have:
- A goal or purpose to add defined value
- A process owner and governance
- Continued process resources and funding
- Measurable KPI’s
It is the task of the Business Owner and CIB Ambassador to guarantee that the above requirements have been met as part of the Definition of Done for the innovation process.