When we talk about innovation culture, the first thing that comes to mind is a work environment where people can develop their ideas. To hear more about this topic, I would like to share amazing insights from Erik Wirsing, Vice President of Global Innovation at DB Schenker, the latest guest on the Navigation of Ingenuity podcast. 

What is Innovation Culture? 

Innovation culture is all about bringing new knowledge into the organization. As Erik pointed out knowledge has to be shared among the people, let them learn something new, and encourage them to create new ideas and solutions. 

One thing DB Schenker is proud of is their innovation department – a place where they bring experience to the right people, train them, empower them and let them be creative. When you create an environment of constant change, networking, agility, and collaboration, employees’ motivation brings increased productivity and higher levels of output that will help organizations reach their important goals.

The biggest obstacle to innovation is having too much guidance and instructions that have to be followed. Put all this aside and give employees the freedom to work independently. This is the recipe that makes DB Schenker successful in their industry – logistics. When empowering team members it is important to provide them with resources, funds, time, and place but keep in mind that this might fail. 

How do you encourage your team to be innovative?

Team members and employees need to feel confident and comfortable to express their thoughts. Therefore the right communication style is the answer to this question. 

We also have to mention the importance of team diversity since their varied backgrounds and experiences allow them to bring broader ideas and new perspectives. Curiosity, openness, and emotional intelligence are crucial when it comes to empowering. It’s not all about monetary incentives and the best way for empowering your employees is to enable them to reach their full potential. Just like Erik said: “Help them to shine”. Erik tells us the story of how DB Schenker’s sparked innovation within their organization:

When Eric joined the company, he was responsible for global innovation and all the innovative activities. Since he had no idea how to run this globally, one of his team members came up with the idea of an innovation magazine that collects stories from colleagues and their experiences. Since everyone wanted to be a part of this magazine, the idea was very well accepted and the storytelling approach got more popular over the years. With time, the sales team recognized the value of the innovation magazine for their customers, which resulted in the new format – an external magazine. With the approach of bringing people together and promoting their success through the “Innovation Champion of the month” column, DB Schenker continues to be a leader in supply chain management and logistics solutions.

What was your last innovation?

As Erik stressed, it is not about establishing something completely new but adopting from different industries. 

His last innovation was not planned, it just happened accidentally at one event he participated in. Talking to one of the attendees who work in the roofing industry he found out about a special paint which keeps the roofing firm. Erik realized a potential use for the paint and adopted it in the logistics industry. As a result, we have a transport vehicle whose floor is coated with this paint to prevent the movement of cargo while driving. Now customers are using it for the forklifts. Such an easy and spontaneous idea provided benefits for different industries.

Creating the next groundbreaking innovation

We also asked Erik if there is one thing he wants to invent or see invented, what would it be? This is what he said: having one device (ie smartphone) with the possibility of the screen adjustments just like we do with Windows on the PC. He wants to stop traveling with his phone, tablet, and computer, one device that can expand or contract based on the use. Other great things he would like to see in the future are self-driving vehicles and space tourism available for everyone. 

Bringing different innovative minds together and being able to manage a big global innovation culture it is important for all the team members to know that within organizations there are people who are going to support their “crazy ideas”. Structured organization, developing a business model, and taking into consideration customer feedback is the foundation for tackling a main corporate “Innovation Blocker”. 

We thank Erik Wirsing for being a special guest on the Navigation of Ingenuity podcast. With certainty, I can say we all learned a lot from his experience in the innovation world. To listen to the episode please visit: https://dev.bluecallom.com/podcast/

Authored by: Tanja Sopcic

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During the past 6 months, we were able to chat and interview influential innovation leaders from companies such as ROCHE, DB Schenker, Sony, LG Electronics, Siemens, Coca Cola, and many more. Obviously, every innovation team has different subjects and issues they are facing, but comparing the general conflict, each company has similar problems in the innovation space.

By being able to speak to these different innovation team members we concluded that the overall main “innovation blocker” is the so-called innovation culture, better said, the missing innovation culture.

Innovation Culture

When talking about innovation culture, we are talking about norms, values, ​​and attitudes, shaping the behavior of all employees, especially those who are involved in the innovation process. Since the innovation process is not limited to the core innovation team and this process is cross-sectional, the innovation culture as such can be described as a cross-dimensional culture.

Describing the key points of the culture is easier than establishing this value system. So,  when talking about innovation culture – what are the main challenges why innovation gets stuck? We defined four challenges:

(1) Top-down approach

Successful, groundbreaking innovation is determined by the ability of the team and their culture. To bring out the best you have to push and give room for these norms, values, and attitudes to grow and to become the standard. Therefore, Innovation is a CEO mandate. Only the CEO and their board can take the much-needed decision in time, capital, and structure.

“Innovation success is not about an idea creation team and taking it to market by the existing organization. Creating an innovation center independent of the corporate organization that is responsible for identifying a viable innovation opportunity and bringing it successfully to market can only be made by the C-Level.”

– Axel Schultze

(2) There is no time to innovate

In many cases, the cross-dimensional innovation team, from the CEO to the working student, is fully stuffed with finding new ways of improving current products or services. They are too busy to think of innovation in a way where opportunities are discovered, reviewed, developed, and validated. Unfortunately, innovation has even been outsourced quite a lot to universities or startups.

(3) Fail and fail fast

Obviously, the pressure to innovate and stay relevant in the market has risen in the past years. Managers tried different techniques, took closer looks at the startup world and how their management is innovative. This led to experimenting with playgrounds, where innovation team members are hunting for inspirations and the next big thing; pivoting, brainstorming, and massive prototyping. These newfound Innovation Hubs, which tend to go back and forth with ideas – prototyping, idea – prototyping, and so forth with every little long-term success. By changing the process into a more structured way, combining research and customer feedback before prototyping, the team is able to save a lot of time, money and is not limited to just “experiment”.

(4) The initial value of an idea is zero

Your idea or my idea?  We are living in a world where recognition for something is key. With this value in the back of your mind, people tend to keep ideas secret because they are scared that somebody is stealing their intellectual property. BUT in a successful and inspiring innovation culture, it should not matter who had the idea first.

“The innovation team must know that all ideas come from past experiences and are composed of millions of impressions, often co-produced by other people. […] Teammates should be rewarded for ideas but also equally rewarded for building new ideas based on previous ideas from other teammates or anybody else for that matter.”

– Axel Schultze

Groundbreaking innovation is not only about the original idea, it’s about what you and your team do with this idea. The value of the idea is created through relentless execution and open innovation by taking into consideration what your customer wants.

Despite these main challenges, genuine innovation can still be created with the right innovation culture and innovation mandate. Rethink innovation from the ground up and discover why innovation is a CEO mandate in our latest whitepaper, “Innovation is a CEO Mandate.”

Authored by: Anna Ranke

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Who is an innovation culture for?
Brilliant talents are not interested in playtime; they are interested in making a difference, achieving something nobody else has achieved yet, and making the impossible a reality. The goal to “make the impossible a reality” is not only a goal of intelligent innovators, it is also the dream of the CEO, the hope of early adopters in the market, and even expectation from investors. When those people say innovation, they mean it. They don’t even think of conventional improvements.

It’s all about making the impossible a reality

To make that dream a reality, you should start with a culture that can make it happen.

1) C-Level Involvement

Discussing innovation culture, innovation success, motivation, results-orientation, job satisfaction, and alike topics with innovation managers and executives, it turned out that the most ambitious and most creative people request a clear mandate from the CEO. Most people’s experience has been, that if the C-Level is not actively engaged and sees innovation as a strategic effort, nothing will get done and the career as an innovation manager is in jeopardy in those companies. The CEO does not necessarily need to be a visionary person but needs to ensure that groundbreaking innovation is happening. Highly innovative people look for companies and teams that have a high probability of creating extraordinary outcomes. Grass-roots efforts to build more innovation in a business have so far failed as far as we could see. Highly talented innovation team members, rather join insecure startups than companies that see innovation just as a marketing message and not as an effort to make a difference. And therefore, the innovation culture starts at the top with a clear mandate for groundbreaking innovation, backed by its board.

We see best results when both the innovation culture and innovation purpose comes from the top management and flows down into the relevant teams. Many executives have the hope that every employee becomes innovative. Whether this is a good idea or not is no longer important as top-down culture development automatically reaches the entire organization.

2) Team Composition

Already when assembling an innovation dream team, the innovation culture plays a strategic role. One aspect of the culture is the definition of the team composition. While conventional R&D centers were primarily experts, the ideal innovation team is a highly diverse team from diverse backgrounds. The innovation culture should include that diversity as part of the model. You will want an innovation team that comes from customer-oriented backgrounds such as sales, from a broader market background such as marketing, from an operational or administrative background, definitely from a financial background, and also subject matter experts from your industry field. If you have all engineers, you not only are limited by having more of the same but, most importantly, limited background. Understanding how ideas get created in our brain, a diverse background of experiences (not business experience) is of great importance.

Another aspect of an innovation culture and its team development concerns traits or talents; some call it soft skills. There are a few traits that all team members should share: For instance curiosity, fearlessness, abstract thinking, team spirit, competitiveness as a team, openness, and positive thinking. One mismatch can ruin the whole team. Candidates should know upfront what you are looking for and how you assemble the team. Never try to “re-wire” people’s minds that will either fail immediately or have long-term negative effects on the mindset of the respective individuals.

3) Co-Ideation Culture

Your idea or my idea? In a successful and inspiring innovation culture, it should not matter who’s ideas any given concept was from. The co-ideation culture is an essential part of the innovation culture. The innovation team must know that all ideas come from past experiences and are composed of millions of impressions, often co-produced by other people. Meetings, exchanges, and joint ideation are the sum of all brains, and the confluence of content sparks ideas. There cannot be individual ownership, and it would distract the ideation process to an unbearable degree. Teammates should be rewarded for ideas but also equally rewarded for building new ideas based on previous ideas from other teammates or anybody else for that matter. Groundbreaking innovation rarely comes from one genius individual – but in almost all cases in the past century from a group of people. Co-Ideation as a cultural element can be stimulated when the innovation software has integrated gamification and reward equally the ideation and idea confluence based on other people’s ideas.

4) Information Culture

Groundbreaking innovation is a tough but absolutely doable goal. Working in isolation, i.e., only inside an innovation lab, is a terrible mistake. Groundbreaking innovation means change. When those changes, coming out of the blue, 99% of homo sapiens will reject it as a natural process. If the innovation team is not keeping adjacent teams in the loop, success moves far away. First and foremost, the C-Level needs to be in the loop. If they don’t care, all innovation efforts are a waste of time and resources. Have a jour fix meeting with the CFO or CEO once a week or every other week for only and exactly 3 minutes. Don’t dare to make it a 4-minute presentation. You will need internal supporters, those from sales who help you work with selected customers, or from marketing who provide you with research or finance, which help you get some key insights. Keep them in the loop. Provide an update once a month for 5 minutes, for instance, the first Monday at 11:50 am sharp. Include selected customers and business partners into the process and if necessary ask for a non-disclosure agreement. An even better way to ensure success is an open innovation project where you include others from your market and even those not from your market.

For most corporations, Open Innovation is a no-go. However, it is more than worth considering it and take the necessary actions that public companies need to make in order t communicate with the outside and ensure equal information to their shareholders. The extra effort is negligible compared to the value it adds to the process and the shareholder relationship. The open information strategy represents the most visible aspect of the innovation culture and helps the innovation process band prevents copying ideas. Who will say “we too have this idea” when the idea has no proof yet? Who will want to be a follower of something that does not even exist yet? But you, with your genuine idea, can and prove the concept over time, very much like Microsoft, Tesla, Ikea, and in the past Carl Benz, Robert Bosch, Alfred Escher, and hundreds of others.

5) Performance Culture

Assuming you understand how the brain creates ideas, you will not want to wait for the magical idea or wonder if the prototype even works. You know how to compile groundbreaking ideas, how to develop a vision, how to get approval and funding, how to build your first minimum viable product (MVP), and how you get it to market. You know that any groundbreaking idea gives you a headstart of approximately 3 to 5 years. Yes, you will not want to lose a single day. Every successful startup or Unicorn is executing with relentless speed, working for recognition and growth every single day like there is no tomorrow.

In most conventional innovation centers, however, teams meditate, play games, follow all kinds of stimulation efforts, try to find random ideas, experiment, not know if an idea is working or not, and finally come out with an improvement at best. They are no competition to even mediocre startups.

The performance culture is a strategic part of the innovation culture. You and your team are in it for extraordinary results. The performance to do so and the achievement of the respective milestones are as important to that team as it is for any top-class athlete at the Olympics. Performance culture is mainly for highly intelligent people who compete against the best and brightest around the world for a solution that is thought to be impossible – they are hardly motivated by money. Competitiveness is a trait every innovation team member has to have. This culture is stimulated by serious goals and rewards that reflect the extraordinary outcome, a groundbreaking innovation. To maintain a performance culture as part of the innovation culture, team members are wired to go for a long-term effect on society, building something that nobody believed is possible. Some will try to do it on their own, others prefer to make it in a team that has already some profound resources. Innovation is the ultimate competition of the mind.  Those individuals want to be a part of the organization they bring forward. Getting recognized for their outstanding achievement, become a shareholder, have a chance to make the impossible a reality is the main motive and key to performance.

During the BlueCallom implementation, we provide an innovation team development program involving HR/HT Management that includes the development of an innovation culture model that will need to be accepted by the CEO.

On Aug. 12th, 2021, BlueCallom will host a “Creating an internal innovation culture” event, part of the Innovative Minds Series. In this Innovative Minds event, gain insights into how to stimulate innovation culture-building from the middle up so it can flow down and how Innovation Leaders can best support it. Please visit to see more details and registration: https://dev.bluecallom.com/creating-an-internal-innovation-culture-webinar/

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These are just a few of the thought-provoking questions that came up in conversation between Innovation Managers from around the world in BlueCallom’s Innovation Thought Leader Circle (ITLC) in April. The ITLC is a virtual gathering of international innovation professionals with a diverse range of experiences with the goal of exchanging ideas and furthering learning within the discipline of innovation. 

What is Innovation and How to Measure It? 

Surprisingly, there is no one-size-fits-all definition to describe the term ‘innovation’. In the software industry alone, “there are more than 30 definitions of innovation” says Axel Schultze from BlueCallom. Without a universally accepted definition, companies will have different experiences in how they identify opportunities for value creation, develop an innovation process, and measure its success. 

Defining the concept of innovation will influence how an Innovation Manager is able to “implement the idea of innovation into the organization” as mentioned by Wolfgang Zondler from Zondler Consulting. To proactively confront challenges in considering how to measure innovation, Tony Namulo from Tavalé recommended an approach to clearly define what innovation means within your organization and relevant indicators to track its success by looking at it “what problem it is you’re trying to solve”.

 The goal is to gain a common understanding of innovation, while taking into account that variables such as industry type or firm maturity will influence the understanding of innovation, according to Alkan Dogan from Simmons & Simmons. He also added that “‘innovation should not entirely be focused on generating ideas and implementing them no matter what,” but rather for Innovation Managers to be selective about what ideas to pursue.

Kevin Minier, Health and Social Care Advisor, also recommended that your organization’s ethics should play a role in defining innovation.

Fiorella Vari Castro from Sportradar discussed how to define innovation within an organization by breaking apart the concept into three types: incremental (improvements to an existing product or service), strategic innovation, and disruptive innovation.

According to Schultze, disruptive innovation can be considered as when “you build something new…new market segments, new behaviors, or new needs.” But, defining innovation can be controversial because it depends on the perspective of the end-user, as discussed by Namulo, in judging whether something is truly transformational or not. As a result, the concept of innovation is perceived differently by alternate groups of people, just depending on their life experiences. 

Interestingly, Namulo introduced a very cool strategy to describe the concept of innovation: rather, “define the opposite of what it is not”. By providing a point of contrast and defining what “does meet the definition”, innovation can be better understood, according to Namulo.

 “What are the key performance indicators for innovation?” asked Schultze. It’s an important question because the chosen metrics or KPIs will influence and incentivize employee behavior and how innovation is managed. To provide an example, a company that measures its level of ‘innovativeness through the number of patents will incentivize employees to produce patents, but “how does this affect customer satisfaction?” questioned Namulo.

Furthermore, KPI considerations include: “Did [the innovation] improve outcomes? Did it make the company more profitable?” as pointed out by Minier. 

Innovation Culture is Key 

A key takeaway from the conversation revolved around the importance of cultivating company cultures to support innovation, with special attention to assembling diverse teams. “Diversity is required to protect against groupthink and linear thinking,” said Minier.  This thought was also echoed by Vari Castro, who said that “having an innovation team with background diversity helps so much to come up with different ideas.” 

But in order to reap the benefits from a group of diverse thinkers, a company should invest in building up an innovation culture that makes productive exchange possible.

Mikel Mangold from Venture Lab at NGK mentioned the need for “collisions and confrontation” to create a productive dialogue with different perspectives. Fostering an environment where creative abrasion can occur leads to more innovative thinking through diversity in thought. Of course, the challenge is then extending this innovative mindset from within the bounds of an Innovation Team and how to “foster culture within the company?” as asked by Vari Castro.

It’s an intriguing question, and one that we may be exploring during our next Innovation Thought Leader Circle on June 11. 

The team at BlueCallom will continue the Innovation Thought Leader Roundtable exchange. If you are interested in joining our next by-invitation-only event, please send us an email: tanja@bluecallom.com

The post Key Thoughts: Innovation Thought Leader Circle | April 2021 appeared first on BlueCallom.

To generate knowledge and share interesting perspectives around innovation in 2021, we invite you to get insights from this lively innovation circle around innovating during a pandemic, overcoming external challenges in this “New Normal,” and supporting innovation culture to prepare for future shifts in the business landscape. 

Entering into the State of Innovation in the New Normal

Technological advancements and digitization are not necessarily enough to transform an entire industry, but the innovative business models that introduce the technology are disruptive. We’ve witnessed how companies have innovated their business models, products, services, and customer interaction techniques during the global pandemic. Innovation is more critical than ever, or as Kevin Minier says, the current status quo is now entering into a “state of innovation”. 

Adapting to the “New Normal” will determine which companies simply survive and which companies thrive. How will innovation look in a post-pandemic world? As pointed out by Robert Cloughtery, companies should expand their innovation vision from short-term fixes to long-term business model innovation.

For example, Hussein Dajani, General Manager of Digital and CX Transformation for Nissan Motor Co. in Africa, Middle East, India, Turkey, and Oceana, discussed how customer experience transformation had been a crucial strategy to meeting customers’ “where they are” in today’s landscape: in their homes (due to lockdowns). “Innovation, I believe, boils down from empathy, from really listening to your customers, seeing what their real needs are, and being able to deliver on that innovatively,” says Dajani.

Shirin Kurtuldu also contributed excellent knowledge on how to capture customer-driven ideas by running a Voice of Customer program and asking your own customers what they want, what kind of innovation they are missing.  

Corporate Innovation is Key 

However, innovating strategically for the long-term in an established enterprise can be difficult, considering bureaucratic measures, regulatory barriers, and risk-averse structures that hold big companies back from implementing transformational changes.

As Hussein Dajani points out, big firms often think from a place of “revenue, dollar signs, and immediate profit,” making short-term approaches more feasible to execute. The focus on short-term profit is a signal that a company is not as forward-thinking as it should be to innovate and gain a competitive advantage over time. The company’s mindset is another key factor.

Axel Schultze, CEO and Founder of BlueCallom, says, “the culture shift from a non-innovative company to an innovative company is a massive change…it’s a significant change in mindset.” The question then becomes, how to create a culture of innovation? Facilitating a culture in which accepting “failing fast is such a key technique to helping with innovation,” says Tony Namulo.

Regardless of whether a company adopts a ‘freedom to fail’ attitude or not, half the battle is pushing a great idea from concept to creation and convincing others of its merit. Circle attendee André Lüscher says, “for every idea, you need someone to convince other people that this idea is great.” An idea won’t make it past the gatekeepers and bookkeepers at each milestone check-in without a product or service champion supporting the idea along the journey to development and commercialization. 

Turn the Pandemic into an Innovation Opportunity 

Due to the pandemic, the nature of work changed. Teams work together in an online and remote capacity. As pointed out by Mikel Mangold, “all this international collaboration that is going on right now is incredible” and is requiring innovation around online collaboration tools to make remote work accessible and productive.

Aside from virtual collaboration, remote work also enables the ability to reach a broader audience. Furthermore, companies can find talents across the global stage. A lot of companies are going to be considering “the global talent pool, in terms of being able to increase the pace of innovation within companies,” says Tony Namulo. Thus, a silver lining to the pandemic is new value creation through the various opportunities presented.

But not only are digital work tools in demand, but digital lifestyle tools are also increasingly important. For example, gyms and the fitness industry are undergoing a moment of reckoning as digital fitness services adapt to meet our new needs, as Laurent Guinand discussed.

The business of education is another industry in a moment of upheaval as online education has been thrown into the spotlight, and online education platforms’ successes might even indicate that online education is the future. Axel Schultze says that “the education system has followed the needs of the industry,” and with changing industries across all sectors, the future is in the hands of the innovators and creative minds. In this way, ‘timing,’ in addition to ‘need’ and ‘technology available’ can be considered the keys to building a successful innovation, as deemed  Tony Namulo. 

The team at BlueCallom will continue the Innovation Thought Leader Roundtable exchange. If you are interested in joining our next by-invitation-only event, please send us an email: tanja@bluecallom.com

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